Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 rn feels like playing with a sh*t DM

Why can't I have battles like in 5e where 10 goblins rush you, your fighter slashes through 2 and your wizard blasts 3 others. And the difficulty comes from there being many enemies or being surprised.


I have to say I like the surfaces. Could be a little less common - especially enemies having surface creating bottles / arrows is frustrating.


I'm OK with some 'set piece' battles. In fact, having a few large scale battles feels like there's something big happening story-wise. But they shouldn't be very common.


THIS -- I'm a long-time DM and in D&D you don't re-do battles. You have easy battles, tough battles and then you have boss-level very challenging battles. But - the players need to feel they can find a way to beat it, no matter how unexpectedly they stumble into the fight. Now you may encounter 3 goblins at lvl 4 and have a drop 2 characters. All boss fights you need to first stumble into, then load and find a way to surprise the enemy. Not fun at all.

This was the biggest negative thing in DOS2 as well for me.

In some situations you notice the enemy first and can plan a sneak attack. Most times I would expect fights to start on even ground or anyway the enemy attacking openly or in surprise. The players should feel they are in trouble, but it doesn't mean you die 9 times out of 10 because you were surprised. The players are the heroes! They should be able to overcome without a re-do.


No matter what you do, Gale goes down. I mean, when the fight breaks, the enemy don't know who you are. Why would they go after the guy farthest back? They don't know he's the easiest to kill or that they should go after that one (unless you meta the AC).


It really does. All the dice roll DC's outside battle. All the fights with overpowered enemies with stacks of HP. Goblins 2-hitting your lvl3 characters. Bosses 1-hitting your AC18 fighter.

If you need to load (even multiple times) for a battle to find the right approach, it's bad game design for an RPG.

Coop is important to Larian and origins are a brilliant design for that, as it allows coop buddies to easily take over companions in your.

There's actually a whole lot I disagree with, here.
The point about goblins (and other creatures) having their stats changed drastically is basically the only one where I feel it could be a problem.
Well, that and the AI's fondness for bullying the weak.
Surfaces effects need to be toned down across the game. but I have no issue with the mechanic existing in principle.

Loot if anything seems to be almost too generous right now if we talk about equipment, and DEFINITELY too abundant we are referring to everything else.

Yeah, I get that. Basically the Origin characters are unused PCs that now act as companions. So your custom NPC is a clean slate apart from the tadpole- so far that is. I am fine with having little to no backstory, and tendencially I have nothing against companions that have a crapton of baggage attached. However, they are so annoying about it. They hint at that there is more to it, and when asked they say something along the lines of "this is not the time" until it is the time and it is all slapped into your face again. Otherwise there is no real interaction and not a whole lot of natural dialogue.
Eder is a fine example, because you meet in that village go along a quest together and he has constant remarks that reveal parts of his past, so I build up a relationship and then help him. Sagani on the other hand is pretty open and straightforward rightaway, so I can ask for the background and the quest attached to her and then decide, if I want to follow it.
In BG3 there is little of that sort, oh there is that banter of Shadowheart being a constant idiot to Lae'zel and some might have a dialogue option after seeing something. To put it into TES:Oblivion NPC speech: "I do not know you and I don't care to know you." It really feels like they created a custom party, then painted some companion character sheets on them and gave up halfway through. The result is a throwaway party, supported by the fact that Larian said that the party is set after Act I implying some of them leaving/dying/whatever.
That is also why I think, they will add real companions later in the game, that are not Origin characters and Minsc being one part of it. And then let the other PCs fade into non-existence. Or actually bring them to life, which would take a lot of rework including quests, dialogue and voice files.

Eder was Minsc-Tier for me, companion-wise.

It'll be a shame if we don't get an amazing, happy-go-lucky or jokingly fun companion in this game.
And not the kind that intentionally tries to make jokes; Eder and Minsc were just being them, and it was fun and funny, sometimes touching and sad.

I hope we get someone like that if there are more companions.
Volo is a bit of this, but he's not a Bard I can take with me on my adventure (Or I absolutely would).

He was normal but he had a hell of a backstory. His brother died in the war of the saint and he was sad about it, sad about Eothas demise and his loss of faith. Eder is a pillar, he is kind, compassionate, quiet, and listening. He play the roles of a tank. But these vulnerabilities, his past, the fact that you recruit him during the soulless child crisis near a hanged-man tree, all of this gives eder a dimension, a thickness, a feeling of realism. Its all in the writing, the character went through a lot. He may be ''normal'', but he has tons of experience, he has lived, and he talks about it.

- So much criticism was leveled against Larian for the lighthearted goofiness of their earlier games. Now everyone is a ‘meany’. They can’t win.
- Goblin health? Yeah, not by the official rules. Fights would be too easy if they had 4 hp though. That being said, it’s part of the whole approach. If rests were limited, lower health goblins and such would be fine. The attrition approach of D&D isn’t present.
- I haven’t seen it overly much, but I don’t abuse barrels. Surfaces were too readily present in dos2. Hopefully not as much here.
- Big battles are fine. Seriously seems like a lot of ADD around here.
- Fights aren’t that bad. As it is now, you just need to rest more than you normally would in d&d
- On the one hand, picking on squishy is good A.I. On the other hand, stupid creatures like goblins shouldn’t have much ‘I’ to begin with
- Loot is already too much. Stop with the welfare state DMing

The fact that one of the most central classes and one of the major classes of the game feels like dead weight doesn't bother you? I would consider that a red flag that needs immediate attention.



Have you considered that I don't want to play someone else's story? That I don't want to play Larians vision of the Hero's Journey but my version of the hero's journey? What reason would there be for this option to not be available to me if not the main focus of the game? If I make a custom character I am making that character to go on an adventure and it's my adventure. I want to be the hero. I don't think that is an unreasonable or big ask especially because it IS early access and now is the time where they can change it without having to retcon later.

So you want it to be a power fantasy.

Of course they can win. By making "normal" NPCs and not cazy snowflakes ones. I rather have characters like in Kingmaker and not vampires, etc.

Hah I remember that. They did tone down the worst of the DoS 1 goofiness for DoS 2, and here they're going for a mostly straight-ahead D&D theme. The current companions aren't likeable on the surface, but we haven't seen all of them yet or their later development in the game. So I'm not gonna pass judgement on that yet.

On some of the other OP points: Goblins having too-high HP is probably a result of Larian deciding the maximum enemy group size the game engine and camera view could support, and then working backwards from there to balance each combat encounter. We get high HP goblins because the game engine probably can't support throwing a horde of lower-HP goblins at the player party.

The current ruleset lets anyone heal, just not always at a distance, so it doesn't really force choosing a Cleric.

Big battles take a while, partly due to AI processing and that may be optimized before final release. The game allows Save in the middle of combat, which surprised me, but makes the larger battles more manageable because I can stop and come back later.

Where did you get that from?

Are you under the impression that being the hero means no trials or tribulations? No struggle? No prejudice or ramifications? Because as I stated clearly if I am making a custom character then it is my adventure and I should be afforded the choice. I never gave any sort of sentiment that could be misconstrued as me asking to change the way the world or other characters react to me or any changes to the story at all and it would not affect my ability to also play an origin character and play through their adventure and their interpretation of the hero's journey. Would you like me to point you towards examples of the hero's journey that are not power fantasies? Furthermore, if the origin characters get to be Larians power fantasy, why can I not have my own?

Grimo those are nearly all good points. Very much agree with the notion that everyone is mean, dark, rude, unhelpful, ungrateful, etc. It sets a pretty crappy tone for what could otherwise be a lot of fun interactions. Especially companions.

The combat difficulty is not tuned yet and it's deliberately hard. I ended up cruising through most battles, but the hard ones I'd party wipe first before figuring out a trick or another. I deliberately didn't abuse surfaces because after playing 160 hours of DOS2 I was tired of that. They really need to limit/remove surfaces. No DM would do what they've done.

The "attack the caster" targeting of low armor backline folks forces you to place them strategically and, once you have the spells, cast mirror image, blur, or one of the other AC raising spells. If you're a caster in cloth armor and no AC buffs you're dead. This becomes much less of a problem after level 2. What's interesting about this is how you'll also do this to the enemy parties, target and destroy the casters before they can nuke you.

If you're struggling with heals without a cleric, note that once you're well into level 2 or so you'll have found enough healing potions that you won't need to abuse the (completely against the spirit of D&D) eating food to heal mechanic. There are also magic items, scrolls, and combat abilities that can heal. I think the thing that's broken here is eating food to heal, not a lack of heals. 5e rules seem to deliberately deemphasize caster healing in favor of buffs.

The loot is ridiculously broken. Searching crate after crate after crate and finding 99% garbage for that 1% very special and amazing magic item that was randomly left out in the open... makes no sense.

I really hope Larian addresses your feedback and similar posts I've read.

Totally agree with OP

NPCs are awful in this game. They just treat you like you are a piece of sh*t without a reason!

Companions are bad too. I would gladly kill Shadowheart (very stupid name) if I didn't need a healer. I always try to avoid companion interactions because they either annoy me or force my playthrough into paths I don't wanna go. And, there is Gale. I don't give a damn if that wizard die exploding, I am not giving any item to him to destroy. Plus, I think Astarion is the most annoying character I have ever encounter in a game. Why does he have to be always flirty? We get it he is a lil bit softy but you don't have to shove it down our throats. You wanna put a bisexual char in your game then take a look at Pillars of Iternity2. Serafen was multidimensional and interesting char overall and one of his aspects was being bisexual but it was not his only characteristic. Astarion on the other hand feels like he would just gonna grab your genitals midfight.

I know Larian wanna get away from stereotypes but it is too much. At least give us some normies as companion option in the future. A stereotype doesn't have to be a uninteresting or dull character.

But this is a Larian game, if you are not playing an Origin Character, you are playing the game wrong. You would think having a custom character name show up as Tav would tell you everything Larian wants you to know about your character. The PC is not the hero of this story, we are the sidekick unless your choose to be a protagonists, i.e. an Origin Character.

We forgot another thing that only a bad DM would let you do: shove every enemy to win. Or let the party wipe by being shoved.

I agree with you on most points, except I love the setpiece battles. I think there should be more some smaller encounters between them, but in general, very fun.

Personally, I don't mind the evil companion. I Actually like all of them. I just want more. I don't get all the criticism toward them, except the lack of meaningful discussion / interaction. I Think all of them have something unique and the voice, the acting, the gesture are all very well done. I would just like more banter during travel, and them to actually get out of their way to give their opinion during quest other than their own. Or them to argue randomly while travelling. That kind of little thing. I mean, I don't think Larian has to do much to make the companion great and rememberable.

And tbh you people should really be more level headed about what character you like or you don't like. Its a roleplaying game. These people are not your BFF . They aren't your friend at all, actually. Its a story where you are surrounded by different, dangerous, and often ambiguous characters. Not a saturday party where you meet friends.
Anyways, we ll probably get to meet your typical ''loyal good straight neverlying always kind compassionate and merciful handsome paladin'' boy and your usual ''sexy innocent mommy girly wise secretive mischievous'' girl later in the game. So I think the work of Larian on unusual character should be appreciated, and people should suggest how to make the current companions better instead of wiping them. Also rooting for more companions , so we get more choices.

Agreed with everything except needing a cleric, I honestly don't know why I have Shadowheart tag along, she's pretty useless to me, I carry plenty of potions and food to keep me up, anyways, and with a warlock, rogue and fighter, I deal enough damage to wipe the floor with most enemies, anyways.
I also just discovered you can throw item on potions and heal people like that.

Doesn't help that the heals are very limited, and rests aren't, not that I needed many rests with the amount of food I hoarded, had to leave the food/potion bag at camp because that thing weighs like 80 kilos by now...

You specifically, indeed, the strange thing is that Lae'zel talking with the other origin characters makes her seem more likeable, she seems respectful enough towards Gale especially, yet to me, all I get for saving her is "Looks like you're not a COMPLETE moron yet"