Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Combat deadsafes - is it "broken"?

We have them, they don't.
And it makes us kinda OP in the end.
Enemys are just "lowly enemys"(?) and not like us, the maincast of this playable Movie, only we have the plotarmor previlige of...-


But that is exactly what is kinda wierd don't you think?
Why are we so special that we can just get back up again and again?
Sometimes from attacks wiping us with a number even higher as our whole HP pool?
And several times in a row too.
( #Redcaps & Minotaurs have an imba attack )
It can be very wierd to see someone stand back up like they were not just cleaved in two (apparently).

But as long as the deadsafes roll in, we are... well... safe. >snort
Or because someone helps us on our feets again.
And of course we all knows the answer why: Cause these are the D&D rules. Part of its design.
Truly a very wierd design, which is sometimes a little immersion breaking.

You know something is abused or exploited if you let an ally intentionally on just 1 HP after "reviving" him,
cause you know the AI will focus that person again and again and you will protect other partymembers hitpoints with it.


And if you are in a battle with only 1 or 2 enemys left, you can use the halfdead companion "as a Tank" repeatedly.
His freshly to the ground falling body will reduce the danger for someone else to take in at least one guaranteed hit.
But it feels very wierd to stop myself from healing a freshly safed Ally up in battle,
cause I feel it is way more profitable to let this dude be SLAMMED DOWN several times in a row maybe, for how long it takes to defeat an encounter.

And only THEN, when we have won, I will heal that bloody, swollen mess up again by using up whatever precious ressources I just safed up to an unnatural extend.
°exhales°


These are the tiny parts of a game that reminds you in a bad way, that you are playing just a videogame and puts a stain on the magic of immersion.

I hope there will be a Hardmode or something that will either
1.) remove deadsafes entirely,
or
2.) add them up inevitably with each reduced healthpoints to 0.
^
As in, after the first reviving, if this characters gets dropped again there will already be one failed safe.
If the same thing happens again, there will already be two failed safes.
And should the same thing happen a 3rd time, the group member is dead instantly.

We have so much resurrection scrolls and this rezz-horny Lich-guy waiting for us in the camp as well.

This EarlyAcess is Easymode with a pacifier as a souvenier.
I hope that if at one point there will be difficulty mods in the game and one starts on EasyMode, they will have a pacifier in their inventory right from the start.
Item description: " It gives you the feeling that you are sheltered and everything will be alright. "

Hahahahaha.
I love games that bully their players for being too much of a coward. ^^

The whack-a-mole style gameplay on 0 HP PCs is an unfortunate inheritance from the tabletop, though Larian makes it even more forgiving by not having critical hits lead to two automatic failures rather than one.

It makes some degree of sense to safeguard the player against bad RNG and Larian's sometimes bloated encounter design.

As for adjustments for higher difficulties, maybe. Many DMs make death saves stick until the next long rest or, in particularly gritty settings, hand out a level of exhaustion each time a PC is downed.

I don't see how the current system in BG3 is any different than any other video game.
If anything, as it stands now, there are fewer ways to bounce back from deaths than most similar games.
I've never seen someone successfully translate loving the sound of their own voice onto a forum before. Very impressive.

So, Death saves are a mechanic in the PnP, yes, however, the fact that you get them and no-one else does is not - it's only suggested as a common practice because of practicality.

If the group of goblins don't have a healer, amongst them (they usually don't), and the party is aiming to kill them, then there's no point in giving the goblins death saves, since the only thing it will do is slow down the game and make it more tedious. In the PnP, it's a practicality of necessity for paying an enjoyable game that doesn't endlessly get bogged down in functionally pointless minutia. In a video-game situation, that is, if anything, even more important. I DO think that NPCs should get death saves as well, but it's wise that our enemies don't.

That said, death saves are, in fact, NOT working properly or reliably in the game at the moment, and if they were, death-tanking would be far less viable.

Whenever a creature runs up to a down body and successfully hits it, you should be automatically losing two death save failures; that means that you're one failure on your turn form being dead, or one second tap away from it...
This isn't happening at the moment. Sometimes being hit while downed doesn't add any additional failures at all, sometimes it adds one. In most situations where people have reported death-tanking like that, it would have just resulted in a very dead party member, and potentially a wipe shortly afterwards, if the saves were working properly.

The other issue is that traumatic death also isn't in or working, as you bring up: if I have 8 hit points, and take 10 damage from an attack, I go down; that's fine. If someone raises me to 1 hit point, and then I take 9 damage from something else - I DIE outright. At least in 5e, that's an important mechanic, especially at low levels, to help curtail exactly this sort of drop-and-pop playing. By the normal rules, if you take damage that would drop you to a number equal to or greater than your hit point maximum below zero, then instead of dropping to zero, you just die from extreme damage, no saves.

Yeah I thought the same. Most of the time it is not us who are going down.
And imagine you would have to down at least 2 or 3 guys in one round - otherwise they run to someone who is already down and delete your battle progress entirely.
I thought of that. Would suck great time.

Ultimately I rather had not have AI encounter with deadsafes.
Felt wierd enough to slay that ugly yellow Toadmonster with the two Tieflings in the beginning for its nice armor and then it had deadsafes. BUAHHAHAAHHAHAHHAHAHA!
Yeah that was wierd. ( Wipes tears of joy from my face. ^^ )
All I want and hope for is an option to either nerf or reduce my own partys deadsafes entirely.

The "extreme damage" thing sounds interesting as well.
Gotta press thumbs hard for something like it.




Tha~nks I guess!?
Was never able to write any differently.
Being a bit of natural wierdo will do that to you.

Do not mistake Larian's unbalanced homebrew for D&D design.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#Droppingto0HitPoints

If Larian implemented the above section as written, you wouldn't feel it's broken.

"A stable creature doesn't make death saving throws, even though it has 0 hit points, but it does remain unconscious."

"Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters."

Take away the healing part of "Help" so that it requires you to cast a healing spell or administer a healing potion to revive a downed character and it won't feel nearly as broken or cheesy.

By administer I mean slowly pouring it down their throats, not throwing and shattering the potion next to their body.

I fully understand your criticism. Larian's biggest weakness is a lack of immersion. BG3 is constantly reminding you it's a video game with unrealistic actions. It's a bit frustrating because previous CRPGs have shown you can be realistic and immersive with fun gameplay.

Make these changes and expect thousands of players storming forums and discord with bug reports that something stopped working and complains game is too hard now.

Worries me that hundreds of thousands people first exposed to D&D 5e via BG3 will think it's a nonsensical system, because Larian took liberites implementing it.

I try to imagine what happens if enemies had the same rules as party members:

You fight a group of 8 goblins.
- You defeat one, a second one comes and helps to get the first one back on his feet. The other 6 attack.
- You beat the second one and also take away the 1HP of goblin one. Goblin 3 and 4 come to help No. 1 and 2 up. The other 4 attack.
- You somehow manage to beat 3 and 4 and also do 1 point of damage to 1 and 2, the other 4 help them up.
- From now on the enemies do not attack but only help each other up all the time. You try to bring all of them down to 1 HP and then finish them at once with a AoE attack. Then you attack them until all of them fail 3 death throws.
- After one hour your party rests because they used all AoE spells, you rest because your fingers hurt from pushing buttons and you decide to have the second fight tomorrow because you do not have another hour of time for playing.

I think it's working fine as it is.

I would recomend to add this option to dificiulty settings ...
Otherwise ... i bet some moder will cut them off sooner, or later.

Except for this to happen, Goblins would have to have infinite number of healing potions or each would have to have Healer feat and healer's kit.

Under D&D rules Help action doesn't bring characters back and ready to fight.

"A stable creature doesn’t make Death Saving Throws, even though it has 0 Hit Points, but it does remain Unconscious. The creature stops being stable, and must start making Death Saving Throws again, if it takes any damage. A stable creature that isn’t healed regains 1 hit point after 1d4 hours."

I described what would happen if enemies have the same rules as party members have them now in BG3.
I did not talk about PnP.