Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Verticality and advantage problem

BG3 seems to be obsessed with verticality and advantages. When combat starts everybody runs off in a different direction to climb on even a slightest bit of highground so they could start throwing things at you. The game would also like you to abuse barrels, surfaces and backstabbing. Problem is that many abilities like Protection for example have extremely short range but when you want to stand your ground and fight as a group it seems the game will punish you for it. Is this how DnD actually works or is Larian content to simply make DOS 2.5?

DnD doesn't give any bonuses for high ground. That said I like the idea of it in BG3 just not the execution. Advantage is approximately +4 to attack rolls, i think +2 would be fine. It also doesn't make sense for spells to have advantage disadvantage for high ground/low ground imo.

I find that Protection fight style is extremely useful in Solasta and it really encourage me to play as a group in combat, like stick my fragile backrow behind my fighter so my fighter can provide disadvantage and cover for him.

In BG3? Every body is hopping around like bunny xD

"Advantage" in 5th Edition D&D is supposed to mean "Roll twice, take the best roll". I'm willing to accept that you get some advantage from sniping from the high ground, but I think it would be also fair to have cover rules implemented as well.

I don't object to enemies having the high ground - I *DO* object to all the enemies having the first shot in a round with exploding fire arrows and fire bombs and creating large burning ground areas that then kill my party without any chance of avoiding the damage. :P

I don't think cover is practical in this game, not without a ton of extra work by Larian with the terrain system.

Isometric 3D games with cover mechanics need a UI to show the player what's full or half cover, or no cover, and those locations need to be coded into the 3D terrain. And then of course you get players who want mechanics where cover can be destroyed by a powerful enough attack, like in XCOM or Wasteland 3. I don't think it's a good fit for this game, or that Larian has the time to do it right.

I like verticality in BG3 and advantage seems like a reasonable way to do it. 5e lacks high ground/low ground because it is something that most DM's wouldn't implement anyway, at least not on a regular basis.

The problem of +(anything) due to high ground &/or backstab is the meta gaming. When you get Great Weapon Mastery & Sharpshooter, they sacrifice their accuracy as a trade off for raw damage. If you shoot every single time with advantage means that instead of a trade off you’ll gain reliable damage. Meaning there’s no sacrifice in actions at all. You’ll never bet against the system. Also, if they implement elven accuracy, oh boy...

There are also classes that directly benefits from the advantage like Barbarians, Samurais, crowd control based classes (bards, Wizards, etc)
With that homebrew rule the game is forcing you to follow that path otherwise you gonna fail miserably. Remember that the foes will also take advantage of that. I’m seeing the 4 finesse battlemasters the easiest party composition & bards and Barbarians dropping from the A tier to D tier.

What would be “reasonable” is +raw damage instead of 2d20. That keeps the tactical positioning in the meta without causing a chain reaction in DnD5e core rules.

I, for one, really like position based advantage/disadvantage for many reasons:

1. It adds quite a bit of tactical play.
2. In most cases martial melee considerably outperform martial ranged in 5e and IMO it's ok for ranged to get a nudge there.
3. It just makes sense, really.

IMO it's a nice touch.

My problem with responses like this is the fallacious assumption 5e is some sort of balance perfection.

All Larian homebrew will do is maybe flip a crown from one bunch of kings of the hill to another. BTW, GWM weapons are not supposed to get the positioning rule advantage in BG3, them being affected now is a bug.

Here's relevant in-game tooltip:



IMO, it's excellent because so many most busted DPR builds revolve around GWM, while light weapon and martial ranged users are usually left in the dust. Maybe it will even things out a tad.

Not arguing. It’s your opinion and I’m okay with that. But what would you suggest to solve the problems I’ve mentioned above that steers away from the raw comparison of melee vs ranged?

That’s again blaming the current balance of 5e balance...
Martial ranged left in the dust? Have you ever heard of sharpshooter? 10 out 10 consider this feat the strongest in the game. Way more high rated than GWM

I addressed that in additional post, which is basically:

1. GWM weapons in BG3 won't get positioning advantage, they do now, but it's a bug as the ingame-tip states directly that only light melee weapons enjoy backstabbing.
2. Ranged builds in 5e are not exactly DPR powerhouses, same goes for light weapon users. So, if anything, this should be welcomed as a potential boost to these build to not make them irrelevant in fast of all these GWM/PoM DPR builds and what not.

I think you confuse between Sharpshooter being undeniably great feat and the total end result. Sharpshooter is great, but despite that ranged builds are universally outclassed by melee builds in 5e. And specifically GWM/PoM melee builds at that.

Other than that - we have yet to see if Sharpshooter survives as is in 5e in BG3. For all we know they can amend it to take advantage into account, but even if not - you will still get biggest cheesiest DPR with heavy melee builds, especially with added bonus of AoE attack they got.

Advantige could be nerfed I suppose, however it is also ridiculous how the AI prioritizes climbing on roofs or even small crates instead of just attacking you. Your party has the same problem as it seems sometimes that you can't even hit anything unless you have some sort of advantage, that's how busted it actually is. It would be nice for a change if we cauld hit something when stands right in front of us even if its back isn't turned.

Isn’t supposed to be like that as the martial ranged fighters trades taken damage to deal less damage? I’ve never seen a game where the archer deals more damage than a melee fighter (not considering JRPGs here)

Also, I’m not worried about that clash between melee and ranged. For real.
I want to know about Tasha hideous laughter, fear, find familiar help action, blind, fairie Fire, guiding bolt, reckless attack, foresight, shadow blade, hold person &monster, etc. Are we going to sacrifice the utility of some spells to satisfy that artificial tactic positioning?

While 5e is not perfect it has been play tested for 30 years. Larian are trying to make a homebrew version of DnD that i wouldn't play after session 0. Its trash in its current form.

5e exists only 6 years... It's nothing like 4e, 3e and so on.

Yes and General Motors develop cars out of nowhere without reviewing the flaws of the previous releases.

Having easier time getting advantage won't suddenly make ranged builds the meta, especially since so many of them rely on cross master with short range hand crossbow and as such harder time expositing elevation.

Other than that, in a BG3 world where monsters have double the HP and 2/3 the AC to begin with - the utility and CC spells actually benefit and all in all, as said - nothing changes for GWM builds which are the most powerful and you definitely would still want to have Hold Monster up and connected regardless, because advantage for many of these spells is not even the point.

So which re-revision of 5e Ranger WoTC have as official now? Sorry I lost count on all the amendments and rollbacks they did there in these 6 years. Also, funny you say that with 4e being a thing.

Heck, you have many people who say that 5e is a soulless D&D, for all this supposed WoTC proficiency and perfection. It's not some "perfect" edition there, its chief achievement is probably that it's not 4e, but to say it's the end all be all D&D perfection... yeah... that's a tad optimistic outlook there.