Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [critique] casters are nerfed in BG3

Okay so Larian has decided to modify the D&D rules to make missing less frequent. To do so they lowered the armor class of enemies but buffed their hit points. Okay fine -- so martial types are more likely to get a satisfying "clunk" when they swing at something.

Unfortunately, this also nerfs casters. Fireball won't be the crowd clearer that it's meant to be. If the goblin party followed the monster manual stats, most of the goblins would die in a fireball and the fighters would finish off the remaining bugbears and trolls. Now, fireball will only weaken the goblins. This lowers the power of casters considerably.

there's no decent rest mechanic in place yet, so at every start of fight the casts can have all spells available, wich is by its own means totally unbalanced as well, so i think we have 2 problems hehe

Wizards and warlocks are not underpowered.

Warlocks are OP because of eldritch blast with agonizing and push.

Wizards, while the sleep spell is less effective than 5e, the wizard is still extremely strong. If anything I would say that clerics are the most under powered if you choose to heal using actions. Especially when you get closer to the end if EA. Action economy is king.

Goblins in the MM have 7 health, but these goblins to do not. Keep in mind that they have health according to their current level and class. You are fighting intelligent enemies, not hordes of weaklings.

I mostly agree. The Cleric is actually OP tho. You can BA healing word, and cast cure wounds as an action in the same turn. Depending on the level used for those spells, it can be a ton of HP. I think there's room for improvement on all of these points though.

If you need the healing sure, they are fantastic. But this game does not require you to have a cleric who heals. You can get by using bonus action poition/food and free up the cleric to do actual damage to make fights shorter.

i'm hopin the food will be fixed, it makes no sense at all to eat a steak during a life/death battle

Many things don't make sense Bruno. It also doesnt make sense to bonus action eat a snack to gain temporary hit points from the Chef feat from Unearthed Arcana.

there are so many problems.

in standard 5e firebolt and sacret flame are similar in power-level. both have an about 60% hit chance on average. 1d10 vs 1d8. sacret flame can target enemies behind cover.

in bg3: firbolt 90% chance to hit. high ground advantage. lights ground on fire even on a miss. does 1d6+3d4 dmg. explodes barrels. lights grease on fire.

and since goblins have 15 hp instead of 7 even if your 50% sacret flame hits it doesn't even have a chance to kill!
same with aoe damage. be it shatter or fireball. if enemies have double the hp these spells just suck.


as for eating a "whole chicken" as a bonus action. yes you can do that. i think i have played 3/4 of everything there is to see in act 1 and i have hundreds of food items in my inventory.
why give fighters second wind when i can just eat a pigs head every turn.

also healing spells are irrelevant since they were weak in combat to begin with and everybody can heal a downed pc and that was the only thing healing was really good for.

Honestly, if Larian doesn't fix it-- mods will. *shrug*

Sacred flame is kinda underpowered not because of its damage, but because it requires a dex save, Most enemies are pretty decent in dex usually a +2 for save so thats a what 12 of 20? That is 60% to hit which is...oh yeah the number you see for most of the game.

Fighters having a free heal is fine because most foods will not heal that high, and if they do, they are limited and heavy.

SOME of you are saying that spells are weak because they dont one shot enemies. That is terrible thinking besides, fireball is going to do 8d6 damage (21 avg which is high enough for most goblins, minus a few lvl 3 ones and will at least bring them to almost death which they will die if the fire pool under them gets them)

Firebolt is 1d6 + 1d4 from ground. Plus 1d4 if they continue to stand in it and take another tick of fire dmg. And its not always a 90% chance to hit, firebolt is a spell attack based on the % AC, height, light etc...

in 5e anyone can heal a downed pc, The only difference is that BG3 aid brings them to 1 hp, where as 5e stabilizes and gains 1 hp every 1d4 hours..


Compared to 5e are casters underpowered no. What is underpowered is the idea that some people expect to kill certain enemies faster simply because they are "supposed" to have x health based on their mm sheet. The dm can change that, and this DM has.

yes i used some hyperbole.
the point (and the problem) still stands

also at level 5 goblins are obviously a joke to fight and many enemies you'd fight in high numbers would have more hp.
spellcasters also will probably still be strong because at high level their power-level increases much more than martials'. they just wouldn't use damage spells if the hp bloat continues.
and instead of fireball (which is overrated anyway) they'd pick hypnotic pattern or fear as a 3rd level spell.

and now that you say it i wonder if they are going to change fireball like firebolt.

Change, most likely.

Fireball IS overrated, hypnotic pattern is my overused spell.

Aside from that though, we really dont know how larian is going to address fighting at higher levels as they did cut us off at lvl 4. Ouch...

Right, im more interested in the martial classes as we really didn't get to see them as much, not to mention no multiattack.


Would fighting goblins at every corner @ 7hp feel tedious?

All of these are more significant than you make them out to be.

Sacred flame is underpowered because it is vs a save instead of attack roll. In a game where you can basically always get advantage from height or backstab (and encounters are tuned for this), spells vs saves are underpowered relative to spells with attack rolls

Sure, foods don't heal as much as Fighter's 2nd wind. But if you eat food on multiple consecutive rounds (a lot of classes don't have an alternate use for bonus action) it adds up to equal or more than the fighter's 2nd wind. Also you can eat food outside of combat, which is less of an issue but still relevant.

Fireball does 8d6 damage which is 28 damage on average, not 21. But ~half of the goblins will make their DEX save and only take half=14 damage. If you roll slightly under average then you won't kill goblins with 10+ hp whereas in PnP you would kill them ~100% of the time.

Stabilizing a PC is HUGELY different from bringing them back into the fight! Fighting with only 3 out of 4 or 5 characters drastically increases your chances of losing the fight.

Actually thank you so much for bringing those up because all of the math was wrong. Including mine!

Shadowhearts sacred flame against a +2 save would actually be about 65% if you did give her a +3 wisdom. Sacredflame remains at 60% if you have a +2 wis and still 2 prof. Sacred flame in general has always felt like a weaker cantrip, which as a cleric i would have always taken toll the dead instead of this since more enemies tend to be lower in wisdom. The game does not nerf the clerics ability to use sacred flame, it just makes it abundantly clear that as a cantrip its not grand (but is really a decent winner when cover is in question and against undead). The issue here in BG3 is not that you have sacred flame, but its the only attack cantrip available at the moment. I should note that Guiding bolt is actually pretty strong @ 12 dmg 1st slot, or 15 dmg second slot and next attack @ adv. OH and light clerics Channel divinity Radiance of Dawn is a 2d10 con save, half if saved 30 feet around the caster. This is pretty damn strong and should not be over looked.

Fireball actually has a 24 avg dmg, not 21, not 28. since 8d6 max = 48 /2 is 24. Or if you prefer avg of a 1d6 is 3 x8 roll is 24. Don't know where i got 21. Maybe miscalculated 6x8? Terrible really.

Gale @ +3 and 4 int would have made the % save against those at 65% and 70%: so no, 30-35% of goblins at a +2 dex save would make this save which , in my opinion as a 5e wizard main, IS REALLY LOW.

Eating food every round does not make second wind obsolete. It just means that you have a good heal to use while you run out the FINITE amount of heavy healing foods and revert back to spamming potions. Many of these fights tend to last more rounds than 5e.. So why not have the ability to heal like that? You need to last for a longer period of time in BG3, which again is why I suggested to not use your cleric as a healer for main actions because you need all the damage and control/debuffs you can get. (unless you cheese)

and i agree that stabling a PC is different than a huge heal in BG3. That response was for

Where anyone could have a scroll for healing, or throw a potion at their downed friends face, or aid them. It doesn't make healing spells bad, no they are still very good in a pinch. I'm just saying, again, that with the action economy you have it would better be spent eating and fighting than burning an action on a heal. Unless of course your burn a touch at lvl 2 and roll well, cause this will quite literally save the characters life.


Also i would like to be somewhat facetious and say that in BG3 that a dead character (Gale who i think dies the most) actually will increase your chances of survival. Dead gale, does decent damage as he...rots, and keeping your enemies in it will do damage over a few rounds. This is why choke points are valuable.

But yes, if Gale were not the case id 100% agree that having a smaller party when one goes down, is bad.

Sorry not tedious at all..

No need to be sorry about it. The question was answered.

Assuming scrolls and "magical" arrows stay in the amounts that they are available in the full game, and that everyone can still use them - I don't see any reason to ever roll a Wizard from a meta-gaming perspective.
Clerics I might keep around, but not because I like the the spells they chose to include in the game, or because I need someone with revivify at level 5. Simply because of the magic items that combo with casting heals.
Hellrider's Gauntlets, Broodmother's Revenge and Whispering Promise makes every Healing word include Blade Barrier, Bless and a Poison Vial. But then again, I could simply put that on a Fighter and use my Second Wind for the same effect.

Yes on the cleric healing items.

From a meta gaming perspective though (the underdark sucks for sight and dancing lights/light can only do so much) Magic missile is fantastic, and being able to cast 2 per round with haste makes it better. If you are playing evil, Melfs poison arrow does nothing against certain enemies, so you need MM for ranged attacks since your 2d6 scorching ray bites if you miss. Not to mention being bait for everyone gathers all the enemies to you so you can spam items/barrels/radiance of dawn etc.

I don't actually see casters being underpowered.
Especially if you lean into the barrelmancy Wizard and go for playing the environment over just direct damage.

The only argument is "the enemies have more health", and sure, but so is Home Brew monsters. Honestly the Monster Manual isn't the end all be all of monsters. Many DMs tweak their own versions to give a bigger pool of variety and challenge.
Goblins already have a +2 to their dex saves, making them resilient to fireballs anyways. (And Sacred Flame, but Sacred Flame doesn't really come into it's own until lvl 5. But man do I wish it was Wisdom based and not Dex based in 5e since it's Clerics only damage canrip)

And the "affects HP" spells. Those are based on current HP, not max XP, so you throw those in after the fireball went off.

Dude, no. Just stop. You've messed the math up twice now which shows you really have no idea what you're talking about.

The average roll of a 6 sided die is 3.5, not 3. That's because you can't roll a 0. So the total options are 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21. Divided by the 6 available options = 3.5

8 x 3.5 = 28.