Cheese fest ? - I wonder if a lot of players who use this term use this play style because they cannot beat the encounters without resorting to it.
Because certain mechanics are available doesn’t mean you have to use them.
The game is very hard and frustrating
for a normal game mode if you don't use backstab, highground advantages and jump.
If you use them it become easy.
If you use barrelmancy, poison, dipping, eating each turn, shove,... It become very easy.
You should try different playthrough and different mechanics limitation to understand how the game difficulty is(n't) balanced.
Everything is made arround Larian's homebrew.
This is true. Larian expects you to use their special mechanics to win (imo-cheese). If you try to stick with 5e rules, you are handicapping yourself, especially since the monsters use Larian mechanics to the fullest.
Several of the "special mechanics" are 5e already, Coating your weapon with poison is the same mechanic as dipping your weapon in fire but gives the player more versatility to overcome damage reduction (if DR is even a thing anymore). Backstab is a buffed version of flanking, during a flank with two characters vs one they would be considered flatfooted and rogues would gain sneak attack.
Height advantage, explosive barrels, etc. sure you got me on that. There's a huge thread already on height advantage and barrelmancy has been nerfed already along with basic spell's doing additional floor effects.
There is actually a big problem with 5e rules where it is way to easy to break a spell that requires concentration. There is no concentration skill nor is feats as frequent as they used to be in 3.5 or pathfinder. Which both would buff the ability to stay focused on the spell while in battle. With the lackluster focus on concentration in the rules, those spells become more of a waste of time and unnecessary feature.
I can't agree with that.
Coating your weapon with poison is fine... But a+ 5D6 poison at level 4 is not to me. In my opinion the poison should add 1D4 or something like that and the 5D6 poison should be something we find maximum once or twice during the game (the kind of item you never use except maybe when you fight the final boss).
Coating your weapon with poison should also cost an action or a bonus action.
Dipping doesn't include any coating.
Dipping should be fine, but if you had to coat your weapon with a "rare" item (maybe not rare but expensive, I don't know but we shouldn't be able to use this so easily everytime).
Coating in combats should at least cost a bonus action and dipping an action so you can use your full turn to do it.
Damages are fine to me and aren't OP. The way you can have those additionnal damages is.
This would also give a utility to a real and normal fire sword (which is not "+1D4 damage + if you're standing on fire you deal another +1D6 damages or another shit like that)
Backstab is absolutely not a "buff".
Backstab is nearly a free advantage while you need to create specific conditions to flank.
I'll be so glad they remove their custom backstab to add the optional flanking rules. This would greatly increase the synergy between characters and the usefulness of melee characters.
High ground bonus wouldn't be a problem to me if it was a reasonable bonus. A +1 bonus allow us to control our %to hit a little bit more and increase the value of good positions. Advantages for highground bonus is way too much, break the rules of D&D (see the topic you're talking about) and totally determine the way combats happen.
About concentration it shouldn't be hard to find an easy mechanic to improve 5e.
In exemple a saving throw with a higher DD (not sure how it work in BG3, it doesn't appear in the log).
I guess there are many place in D&D for custom additionnal rules but they have to be balanced arround everything else. At the moment everything Larian choose to add is way too powerfull and every encounter are defined by those few mechanics.
