Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The problems i am still seeing with warlock after the new patch.

As a foreword I want to state that both Wizards and Larian Game design are both great in general but both flawed in some regards in relation to delivering Baldurs gate 3. GM’s in general who use 5th edition use the “rule of cool.” But I your beta you are much more likely to run into “super fans” of 5th edition who play the game verbatim and have a love of the rule system. This is not the general Baldurs gate fandom as they played mostly in 2nd edition ruleset, Im not saying go to 2nd I think that would be disastrous, what I am saying is I hope you lean more into the Larian game design side of things and don’t try to be 100% RAW accurate. You guys know better what a video game needs to entertain, you should take steps to make multiclassing more flexible and fun, and support a lot of build diversity. 5th edition does not really do this natively, they advertise some very core build paths that are “allowed” and many others are not supported. Please don’t be a RAW stickler RAW has a lot of faults players who play video games will not wait around for and find very frustrating definitely slapping the RNGeebus tag on the game or accusing it of XCOM math.
After getting that off my chest lets continue to what I see plaguing warlock still. The errors/game design I see still causing troubles.

Please dear god make accuracy 10% higher minimum across the board (monsters and players) watching rounds upon rounds of wiffs is so boring. I think you should also make spell save DC’s harder for both players and monsters by 10% (Aka 2) just make the base 10 instead of 8 that everything adds to. This is a video game, there is no real roleplay going on during combat like there is at a table to fill the painful wiff fest with banter/entertainment. Get combat moving all around, make sure THINGS HAPPEN.

Hex does not trigger on offhand attack. Im not sure if you intend this to be this way or not but do try to keep in mind repetitive proccing of dark ones temporary HP and hex is very critical to the gish warlock build, hellish rebuke should also trigger this ability (temp hp) if it lands a killing blow. This temp HP to my knowledge should not be getting wiped on rest of either type.

To my knowledge superior Darkvision still doesn’t work. Also, fun fact in relation to light and vision, when carrying a torch you don’t gain light/vision, nor does it do any fire damage anymore.

You are on to something when you let the buff spells last (particularly concentration) until a short or long rest. I think you should definitely shy on the side of Larian game design here let players get more use out of spells duration especially since you intend to put a timeline and cost for resting. The game needs to be optimized for continuing on when a normal RAW d and d party would need to rest. Tick tock you’re on the clock.

Blade ward might make a lot more sense as a bonus action spell, or as a reaction against the first qualifying hit. I know that goes against RAW, but in any given scenario players will almost always choose to use their action on any spellcaster for an offensive cantrip, a leveled spell, an attack, or some form of crowd control over this spell, if it competes for the bonus action slot or reaction slot this is a lot less likely and makes choosing or not choosing this spell a lot more painful decision., also in the reaction slot it supports the Gish playstyle better while not particularly taxing the mage playstyle still wanting it.
Mage armor should not require you to be naked or wearing clothes, more clothes options early would be nice …. Stripping to my underwear for more ac at lvl 2 is getting old. It should simply compare with your existing ac and use the better (this system will need to be in place for barkskin on druid anyway).

I really thing cantrips being their default level 1 damage + spellcasting ability mod, and instead giving spellcasters more actions on the cantrip scaling levels so they can cast them more times, is better than cantrips scaling dice due to action economies and the different multiclass builds characters could obtain with this.

Clerics included (replacing bonus D8 damage on first hit.). Rogues/monks i find fit better to match fighter action economy and have SA be 1d6+dex mod, and can proc more than once per turn.

I implore you to try these things and test them, you will se a much healthier place for rogue, and monk (when you add it) and you will se a lot wider variety of warlock builds specifically in relation to this thread. Thsi also stops fighters from feeling like they have multiple applications of haste cast on them in comparison to other classes who can only make one choice for thier action.

This helps mage type jobs perform better in more varied conditions, hex will interact more with eldritch blast if you cast it more instead of it doing double damage. this also helps keep cantrip casters in a healthier damage curve as they have more opportunities to hit and will perform closer to the actual accuracy curve.

Just be sure for game balance to limit the casting of only one single leveled spell on your turn. (reactions are their own business)

The suggestion to buff DC's in favor of the caster is interesting. I'm open to that idea and I'll explain more below.

This issue exists for any ranged caster, not just warlock. Currently there is a condition know as "threatened", which has ranged attacks roll at disadvantage when an enemy is near. I've been questioning why a condition like threatened is in the game. Is threatened in the game to entice the player to use more spells? Is it there to entice the player to bunny hop away with their wizard?
> For example, an enemy encroaches on a wizard and the wizard now becomes threatened. (Firebolt will now roll at disadvantage)
> You go to use Poison Spray and most enemies have enough constitution to evade Poison Spray. Now the option to use is Magic Missile because it's unaffected by threatened.
Threatened feels like an unnecessary complexity. It makes ranged attacks more likely to miss and exacerbates all the benefits melee classes have now. Why play a caster, when ranger can just use spell scrolls, has more AC/HP, and can deal better damage in melee range?

Threatened would be a lot less of an issue if spells like Sacred Flame and Poison Spray were available 65% (or higher) to hit in more encounters.
Also, threatened could also just be removed from the game.

Why change the core system so much? There is no need.

Just use monsters across the board with lower CR.

12 instead of 14 AC? 10% higher chance to hit.

Saving throws of 4 instead of 6? Same as having DC 2 points higher.

If you want to have faster fights/more hits, just decrease difficulty of encounters aka CR and viola, same effect.

So why change a system that already works? DnD 5e RAW has solutions for your suggestions without the need to alter the rules. So why change it?

In 5e rules, a ranged attack is rolled as a disadvantage if the target is right next to you (5 feet). Threatened is Larian’s version of 5 feet, I think. There’s no grids so it’s not as clear but it’s trying to match the rules.

Magic missile is auto hit so rolls don’t matter except on damage.

Ranged attacks have the benefit of ... range.

To counter that, if you are in melee, there needs to be some disadvantage.

That you are asking yourself, why you should play a caster, when every class can use spells via scrolls ... Well, Larian, they implemented it this way.

Threatened makes sense, or else there would be no need for melee weapons.

My guess is to encourage advantages like height and backstab. Using height and backstab trivializes hit chances.

Yeah, they wanted people to hit more. So they changed the AC ... But with more hitting, they needed to increase hp ... But saving throws stayed the same, so spells hit less often ... So people complain, that spell DC is too low ...

But you know that

It's just a little bit frustrating to see that wheel go round and round, just to make BG3 "more appealing to the masses".

This could be done with difficulty settings, why change the system itself that is (more or less) balanced?

Sorry, I just don't understand.

DnD 5e already has rules in place to balance melee and ranged. (for example high damaging spells require spell slots, melee fighters usually get better armor).

In Baldur's Gate 3 ranged attacks already have disadvantage if the target is too close (within 5 feet, same as 5e rules). Threatened affects the character at roughly 3 meters, so if your caster just happens to be in a congested room, they will have disadvantage. It's a change from DnD's rules and one that negatively impacts casters.

Threatened is not the biggest issue in the game, it's just really annoying that you regularly deal with situations where you are incentivized to move casters to higher ground. In comparison to tabletop, if the opponent isn't within 5 feet then the caster will have most of their abilities to choose from without worrying about disadvantage. There is no, "oh a battle started from that conversation... my caster started in a position where they happen to be threatened... guess I'll misty step over there..." Caster movement can feel like a chore rather quickly, all because of threatened.

It's much more fun to start the battle off with "I'll hit that goblin with Eldritch Blast and take out that enemy, so I can keep my caster in good range to follow up on other enemies with spells".

Add in that melee attacks get free advantage from backstab and it's easy to see that casters are currently getting the short end of the stick.


Editing because I missed your post the first time. Even if there are no grids, a radius from the character can be used. Also, Larian already has a status for "too close" at 5 feet. Threatened is an entirely separate status that affects a greater radius.

I'm very honest when I said that I don't know why threatened would be a status in the game while "too close" already exists (so we can't assume it's only Larian's version of 5 feet). I want to give Larian the benefit of the doubt as well. I've pondered it was added to the game for NPC combat AI (for example: If threatened move X meters away). It could be a bug that threatened is affecting player characters for all we know.

You have analysed the status quo very well, thank you for that. So we are on the same page, we both don't know, why Larian designed it the way it is.

At least in my opinion ( and I am very happy that there are so many people in the forum who are so much better in expressing their opinion than I am), DnD 5e rules have such situations covered quite well, but Larion failed to implement it.

I know I am repeating myself, but I am just advocating for a true conversion of DnD rules to a Crpg, giving it to the gamers, and then start itering changes from there.