Originally Posted by VeronicaTash
And this is the problem with the base of gamers here - no imagination and no concept of variety. The archdruid isn't an actual archdruid - she was second in command. The actual archdruid, when you find him, is weakened and fighting a mass of enemies that overwhelm him. The mindflayer you kill is near death - you are not fighting them at full strength. I never encountered the red dragon, but there is probably mechanics making it sensible. You look in the monster manual and you get what the average enemy is like - you can face much stronger goblins with 18 level stats and such if a DM threw them your way or you could have a feeble dragon to provide an easier time. People seem to have a difficulty comprehending that not all of one type of a creature are the exact same thing. I have to ask if their first encounter with a black person was Michael Jordan playing for the Chicago Bulls, decide that all black people can dunk with ease, and they come across Joseph Anthony Cox (the little person from Bad Santa) and assume he must be able to dunk as well because he too is black. Different members of the same group have various abilities and the ability to make strong or weak versions of a group is just decent storytelling. You don't kill the mindflayer trying to get passerbys to dig it out and get thousands of XP for it - you get what is comparable to the task at hand for killing a near defenseless mindflayer on the verge of death.

That's an exceptional streak of terrible arguments to justify a poor design decision.

I think Biomag summarized the issue wonderfully here:
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Its not even about the difficulty level. Its about how the world feels. In BG3 the execptional is standard.

"The Archdruid is not an archdruid but a regent" is the only one with some actual merit.
The actual archdruid is not tagged as weakened or debuffed, but as a LEVEL 5, period. Even later when at peak form. Which, aside for the horrendous idea of scaling any NPC or monster to the player's level range, leads to the secondary problem that levels shouldn't be openly displayed to begin with.
The fact that you can kill a dying mindflayer with a single HP remaining is not an issue compared to the fact that he's explicitly labeled as a low level enemy.
Having the occasional "goblin champion" wouldn't even be an issue, if not for the fact that by this game's standards that category summarizes half of the goblins thrown at you.
The red dragon shouldn't even be an actual fight (it's there just to look intimidating in a cutscene), but it doesn't change the fact that you can target it and it's labeled as level 4. The similar Red Dragon in the prologue can be targeted and it's labeled as a level 1 creature... Are you seeing a pattern here, Veronica?

Your example about the "seeing a black person for the first time" is completely misplaced, anyway, since D&D has already in place the rules for having humanoid sentient races scale across the entire range of the power levels, while monsters aren't supposed to be leveled at all (they have a challenge rating, instead).


Party control in Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete mess that begs to be addressed. SAY NO TO THE TOILET CHAIN