Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestions: Class Balance Changes

It is not desirable to change a bunch of spells because one is underperforming. Its a expensive, and often unneeded approach.

I think the current approach to hp/ac is good for the most part, especially if we consider what other classes role will be. Having AC lower provides immense value to defensive buffs that come from classes like cleric, paladin, bard, etc. Shifting classes in general in a way to large amounts of ac (or damage reduction) would essentially invalidate those classes. it would effectively put cleric into a "heal, damage spam" mode, as opposed to its other current options like crowd control, and buffing. This is highly undesirable (imo) and would result in such classes being more "useless" and less "enjoyable". The game needs to stay in its current direction for now, but look at ways of reevaluating some of the "rules" of table top dnd, and looking for ways to improve over all class functionality and enjoyment.

Examples of things I consider "Rules" are things like the dice rolls, AC, etc.
Examples of things I consider "rules" that should be "suggestions" are things like "if companion can be used in combat or not".

All of this.

Re: firebolt
Cantrips are designed to be a caster's bread and butter (especially at lower levels), and you would pull out higher level spells when they are going to be really impactful because you only get a few uses each day. By filling the world with scrolls and removing all consequences from long resting, Larian has essentially removed the cost from casting higher level spells because those few spell slots no longer have to last you through a full day's worth of encounters. If that cost is removed from leveled spells, of course they're going to be better than cantrips. The issue isn't that cantrips are too weak, it's that house rules have turned the really strong fancy stuff into your bread and butter. Remove scrolls and remove the possibility of getting a full night's rest after every 24 second battle and balance is going to improve substantially.

On a more general note, balance in games is often created by imposing restrictions on things that are more powerful. Restrictions make things interesting. If every spell/ability is equally useful all the time, then they all end up feeling essentially the same and it gets boring. It feels really good to realize that you have the exact right tool for a particular job, rather than one tool that you use for everything.

+1

It's only enemies that had their AC nerfed, we'd have to be fighting clerics, paladins, etc. for those to come into effect.

AC exists in tandem with proficiency+modifiers, as the player levels up, gains more proficiency or ability score improvement, there is a sense of progression.
Currently only adjusting AC down and HP up has limited the impact of player-sided spells. A sleep spell from the enemy is a lot stronger than a sleep spell cast by the player (enemies have their HP increased while player HP has stayed the same).

AC- and HP+ was a quick change that left a lot of spells in the dust.

Spell save DC was untouched and is currently nerfed, attacking spells get increased success from the reduced AC, spell save DC does not. Right now Sacred Flame isn't very viable and that puts Cleric closer to the situation of being a heal-spam class.

All spells impacted need a review, and hopefully changes to the game are implemented.

Edit: I've said this before, less spells would be underperforming if the player had been given bonus proficiency instead of the enemy losing AC.

Update: about beast master/hunter. The familiar and companions should always follow the rules below

- they do not unsummon on camping

One of the major issues i find with this class is the constant need to re-summon a pet after camping, etc. Its very annoying.

In addition to explain the in-combat casting of familiar/companion:

The primary reason I am advocating for them to be summoned in combat is because the class game play would significantly improve for beast-master if they could interchangeably swap out pets each turn to deal with the situation accordingly. this would give beast master an insanely unique approach at game play from its rival, hunter. It is purely for this reason that I am advocating for this change, but

That's more than uncalled for. I will profess that I did initially think the same way as well, but not now when I understand where his balancing priorities are. He appears to be more focused on numerical analysis, when the rest of us are generally more focused on tactical analysis. It's very different.


I'm not entirely sure you understood what I meant. I never said anything about altering party AC, only enemy AC. Increasing enemy AC but lowering their HP to be in more line with tabletop shouldn't have any impact on party AC. It's also interesting that you brought up buff spells, because certain parts of this forum are in an uproar over a recent developer interview where they mentioned that not many people appear to use Bless, and they assumed that it was because that people find using buffs to be boring. Some people rather justifiably took that rather personally, because basically saying that the majority of the community finds a tactical option to be boring is not really something you want to hear a developer of a turn-based game say. But again, DnD is an inherent cost/benefit analysis system, so what most of us think really happened was that the other systems Larian put in place made it so that we don't consider Bless to be worth using.

Increasing enemy AC but lowering their HP would incentivize using buff spells more often, because now that opens up the tactical option of attempting to manipulate the RNG in your favor through buffs to kill an enemy faster. There is nothing similar that exists for the other way around besides an across the board buff to damage numbers in general, or indirect tactical options like shoving enemies into out of bounds areas to instantly kill them or turn 1-2 ambush strategies like barrelmancy spam. It's nice that the unconventional strategies exist, but the majority of grievances lie with the idea that the whole game appears to be balanced around such tactics, making it feel rather repetitive. That is even worse when there appears to be little recourse to turn a situation that goes bad back into your favor besides a straight up slugfest, because the enemy HP/action economy will either completely overwhelm you in a protracted fight, or the player tools from tabletop that exist to buy time to turn a situation around just simply don't exist in BG3 right now.

If you want to understand where I'm coming from, I would hope that you can drop by my thread from yesterday and give your thoughts there.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=757307

I would also suggest trying out Solasta too, for comparison purposes. That game is a lot closer to tabletop standards than BG3 is, and I think it'd help you in understanding everyone's expectations of what they want the balance to be like in BG3. It probably wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that a lot of the criticism here wouldn't be anywhere near as focused if that game did not exist. For example, I mentioned Bless earlier - it's hardly used in BG3, but it's considered one of the most valuable spells to use in Solasta, even though both spells generally work the same in both games.

I should repeat myself once more, a lot of the clunkiness in BG3 basically revolves around Larian's changes being molded into an incomplete rendition of the source material. Your suggestions would probably be okay if we assume that everything else such as high ground advantage is left alone, and certain things like player-controlled reactions and ready actions are never implemented, but many people do not want to accept that being a possibility.

have you considered the impact of game difficulty that would effect?

While I do agree that pets should be able to be summoned in combat, I disagree with them being able to just keep swapping the pet they want during combat. That would just make that class completely OP.

You should play Druid when the next patch goes live. What you are advocating is essentially unlimited wild shape except even more powerful because both your animal and ranger can perform actions.

Yes, the way dice rolls work lowering AC by 2 increases the success of attacks by ~10%
Giving the player +2 proficiency increases the success rate of attacks and spell save DC by ~10%

In the current game state attack success rate was buffed, but spell save DC was not. Limiting player-sided choice.

EDIT:
There is also the option of increasing base spell save DC (8), but DnD was balanced around AC or Diceroll with Proficiency+Modifiers. Starting with the levers from DnD it's easier to keep the game in balance. Every new lever, such as increasing enemy HP, needs review for it's downstream effects.

Roll back here. Wizards are intended to have weak Cantrips. That's part of the design.

Warlocks have a stronger cantrip...

But the ability of creating a smoke cloud would only mean a higher chance of coughing

Putting someone in a cloud/smoke/darkness is an attack. If they see you, you will enter combat. If they don't, they will exit the cloud as quickly as they can, so it doesn't help with pickpocketing.

Wizard:
-Firebolt is going to get buffed by its own nature as a cantrip at level 5. Cantrips are not supposed to be powerhouses and are more weaker/situational spells that cost nothing to cast, with the exception of Eldritch Blast which also has Invocations that can be added to it, increases its power and versatility but that exception exists to give Warlocks a sort of core ability.

Ranger:
- I am fine with them not being summon-able in combat but I'd argue that Find Familiar for all classes that possess ritual casting (Wizard) or the Ritual Casting feat should be free and not cost a spell slot. This should extend to all "ritual" spells, and perhaps if Larian wanted to they could be resummoned in combat but in that case it would cost a spell slot and an action. Also familiar/companion summons should have ZERO interaction in the concentration of Mage Hand or any other spell that gives a temporary controlled creature.

- I actually agree that creature's jump distance maybe should be modified as right now it calculates off of Strength I think? But if Jump has to be a mechanic, arguably animals should be able to do it better.

- I am not sure if increasing the area of effect would be good or bad, but it might be worth testing.

Fighter:

- Second wind is supposed to be 1d10 + Fighter Level so it will get better on its own.
- I don't have much comment on the other two other than Fighters can be ranged as per their class kit, and it is just as viable and valid as a melee fighter. I am not sure how everything is supposed to react but there are many ways to build a fighter to make them a ranged powerhouse and this does not invalidate ranger in any way. (I actually of the opinion that ranger is the most redundant and weakest class but I would not remove them at all and consider them to still be quite good and can have a lot of fun with them.)

Rogue:
- Rogues have many tools at their disposal to do something like this already and later on there will be many more tools. Also invisibility from your wizard or warlock is enough to cover this for now.

Cleric:
- No. Cleric is mostly balanced right now other than enemies always passing the offensive cantrip spell DC when it shouldn't be that bad. Healing Word is ranged, Cure Wounds is touch. Later on there will be even more healing tools, and if Celestial Warlock ever drops there will be even more ranged healing. Healing right now is fine as is I'd argue, only other combat variables need to be modified, like how you can freely eat in combat or how advantage is handled and how easy it is to get.

This. The stupid rest after every combat system that is being encouraged right now is the reason cantrips seem "weak."

I''d actually argue that if you could rest in fewer places you'd have more value to things like firebolt. The problem is the other abilities, like magic missile do so much damage and be casted so many times that fights do not "typically" last long enough to value this ability. Less rest means that there is more dependence on things like firebolt, and so you'd use it more. This is all logical, but the problem is players are efficient, and they will always do the more efficient thing, so this will lead players to recall to town a lot to sleep then come back and so reducing the sleeping zones would result in more recalling, and subsequently an annoying change to the game.

Moving half rested over to regenerating all spells would help this problem significantly (ie that resting after every combat is the more efficient thing to do) but the issue is that firebolt still is not a valid spell to be casted in most cases. You would not be able to alter the resource system (how many times you can cast) because you'd still have the issue of missiles > firebolt.

maybe moving the entire resting system to a time best thing would be a good move for this "spam" of resting, ie you can only full rest every 30 minutes. This would solve both problems, since half rests will not regenerate most spells, and subsequently firebolt will be a better change for the class.

I still feel like its just as simple as buffing it, but if there is indeed "rest spam" going on amongst everyone, i would encourage a timer on full days rest. I myself spam it also. Big battle > save (cuz of crashing > rest > save, literally every large encounter, so it probably needs to be changed.

The rest spam brings up another point. In most other DnD type games, you are discouraged from resting as much as possible, saving that option if you know there's a huge boss fight in which you will need all of your resources.

For reasons that are partially due to the lack of consequences/penalties and are also unrelated to the combat design, BG3 is actually the exact opposite, and it's been kind of a design whiplash for me. If you don't rest spam, you straight up miss out on a lot of story and cutscenes. For example, in my latest playthrough, I managed to get into the Druid's Grove and cleared half of the crypt before doing my first full rest, and it appears I completely locked myself out of interacting with Raphael at all because of it.

Maybe they should add a mechanic to make resting cost something cause it looks like they will not have it actually impact time? Like perhaps it should cost an amount of food and they could remove the fact we can eat in combat so much, food will then have an active mechanical importance without being OP? Maybe make that an optional mechanic that the player can choose to enable with other small life in the world mechanics?

Yeah, the fast move teleport + rest anywhere without consequence fundamentally ruins the class balance AND the plot progression.

I wish there was a day/night cycle to indicate when we should take a long rest (could be during day or night but only once every 24 hours.) Even if they can't add the visuals for some reason, I still think they should make a once per day long rest the default (have a time counter somewhere) and have a menu option to turn it off for those who want the easy method. Would also bring more balance between Warlock and Wizard.

This is irritating. Pretty sure this is why I missed a lot of companion story as well.