Originally Posted by Seraphael

The issue with Sacred Flame is that it doesn't benefit from the excessively easy way to leverage ADVANTAGE to ranged attacks (same goes for melee w/ flanking). This can be fixed somewhat with changing the homebrew as outlined below*. From bad to worse; Sacred Flame saves vs DEX which is the most heavily resisted save.

Larian's homebrew is GUARANTEED to break game balance in any number of ways and will force subsequent patchwork homebrew to fix what needn't be broken in the first place, so a better fix would be more authentic D&D rules whenever that doesn't get in the way of fun gameplay. A middle ground solution could be to give Clerics the non-PHB cantrip: "Toll the Dead" which saves vs WIS. Besides being strong on its own, this would afford Clerics with both cantrips the option to target the weakest save providing the class with a much needed combat boost w/o expending resources.

Shadowheart illuminates the problem further as she is very poorly built both mechanically and thematically (a roguish cleric of her sleight build should swap dex and str currently), so now she is poor both ranged and in melee outside of abusing the excessively imbalanced rest mechanic to cast spells every round.

BALANCED ADVANTAGE CHANGE (while still incentivising fun tactical mobile combat):
Flanking: +1 attack flank, +2 attack back
Higher Ground: +2 AC/DEX save (half cover to simulate defensible position). No disadvantage on attacking prone enemies on lower ground.



Toll the Dead could certainly help.

Shadowheart definitely needs better Dexterity, if she was halfway decent with a bow, it would make the suckiness of Sacred Flame less problematic for her.

I don't really agree with your proposed advantage changes, though. Here's my thing with Advantage. In tabletop D&D, there is literally an infinite number of ways to potentially get Advantage. Anything you want to try, anything the DM will allow. In every circumstance, you could come up with some creative way to get Advantage. Since you can't do any of that in BG3, being a programmed video game, I think adding a couple of systemic Advantage sources is a nice compromise. Getting Advantage would be really hard in the game if they removed Backstab and Higher Ground Advantage. I think that would be less fun.