Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How good is Advantage ?

in the overal mechanics a +2 is pretty heavy bonus in 5e. You should not forget that it would stack upon other circumstances or abilitys. So a+1 sounds more reasonable.
But dont forget in BG3 height is not the only source of advantage.

For the sake of science, I have refined my calculation.

Assuming a mean base hit chance of 70% and a standard deviation of 2 (which I think is pretty reasonable) yields a result of 4.1

Wolfram

"Code": sum from n=1 to 19 (erf((n - 6 - 0.5)/2 , (n - 6 + 0.5)/2)(1 - (n/20)^2 - (20-n)/20)) /erf((1 - 6 - 0.5)/2 , (19 - 6 + 0.5)/2) *100 /5

If anyone feels like playing around with it:
To change the mean hit% --> replace the four 6s
To change standard deviation --> replace the four 2s
Couldn't find a way to declare constants

That's sounds like a decent distribution. I took uniform partly because you did, partly because I could compute by hand. I feel 65% is a good baseline chance in 5E, since the Generic Custom Monster has AC 13 at level 1, and a good adventurer would have 16 in their main Ability Score. But Larian decreased AC, so 70% might be a better baseline in BG3.

nothing more than positioning????

You joking right? positioning is key in any fight. It's huge in any combat even vs highly advanced forces and numbers... in any combat it's huge you sir have zero clue on tactics and strategy.

You don't have a bonus to your accuracy when you're higher. You should try using a real bow^^

But please can you answer me in the other thread about advantage. I'd really like to have the answer of someone whose oppinion is 100% opposed to mine.

Of course positioning is important.

Important enough to equal what is effectively god like power at near Max level?

This implementation is a joke, and will be the first thing I remove with my MOD.

As long as we can get rid of it in a mod I won't be too sad about the money I spent. Well, that and dipping.

I haven't looked at dipping, but I've never seen the AI do it, and I don't either.

I don't think this fundamentally changes the arguments here, but for the sake of keeping things factual:


Foresight
9th level divination
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Components: V S M (A hummingbird feather)
Duration: 8 hours
Classes: Bard, Druid, Warlock, Wizard

You touch a willing creature and bestow a limited ability to see into the immediate future. For the duration, the target can’t be surprised and has advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. Additionally, other creatures have disadvantage on attack rolls against the target for the duration.
This spell immediately ends if you cast it again before its duration ends.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Foresight#content

Larian could reply : "Well, in this case, we will give foresight a double advantage :D" : 3d20, keep the best ! Yumi !

Or we could pump the brakes on this insanity now, during EA, and remove it completely so that Classes, and Spells, can have the intended level of impact.

of course positioning is important, particularly in a fight like we see in dnd. It gives you much better sightlines, it restricts the sightlines enemies have on you, it makes it much more difficult for them to get to you, and you can use it to force attention onto particular party members when needed.

All of these things are either already implemented, or are absolutely something you can make work in a game like this. Good positioning is incredibly powerful without it giving you the effect of one of the strongest magical spells available to non-divine casters. A party at second level getting the effects of a 9th level spell from expending their movement and maybe bonus action for a turn or two (if that) is not a reasonable change to the rules.

Imagine if we got meteor swarm for free just for standing near a bonfire? Or power word kill for passing a DC5 persuasion check?

We need some kind of upvote function around here...

I'm in the camp that height advantage = dice advantage is too much, but equating this to the 9th level Foresight spell is a pretty disingenuous argument and actually weakens the good arguments made here in this thread.

Just having a 8 hour non-concentration advantage to saving throws (far rarer than attack advantage), ability checks (fantastic for shove, grapple, dispel magic and counter spell), and not being able to be surprised is powerful enough for a decently high level spell.

Maintaining a high-ground advantage is also far more difficult than the attack/defense advantage granted by Foresight.

In many cases, enemy movement can simply deny your high-ground advantage by closing the gap to threaten you. A single casting of Misty Step basically guarantees it. If the AI was smart enough, it can even deny you line of sight to render your high ground useless. It's still overtuned and should be changed due to other reasons, and because the AI isn't clever enough to deal with it, but it's not Foresight.

I assume our ultimate goal here is for Larian to actually listen and apply this feedback. I don't think hyperbole is going to help that.

I agree foresight is better overall (particularly late game and out of combat), but I'm not convinced that makes the comparison unfair, particularly in a lot of early fights where all you have are really attack rolls, and when we are just talking about combat applications. There have been better, longer discussions about all the weaker abilities that high ground and back stab completely invalidate too, but I don't think it would contribute much to bring them all up here when foresight is just as useful a comparison.

Also, it's not at all difficult to maintain high ground in most fights, particularly with how strong shove is. Enemy uses an ability to get to where you are, you just shove them off the cliff or ledge, it actually makes them trying to get to you a worse move than just trying to find somewhere safe-ish and shooting from the ground. You can regularly just park your whole team on high ground and be untouchable, wizards being able to nova every single fight means your damage isn't really a big concern, and there's zero risk to it because your melee characters can launch people who try to force you off.

You can still fail to maintain it, but you have to screw up in so many different ways for that to be the case, hence my comparison to a DC5 check. Comparison to it being like us getting power word kill for a persuasion check is similarly valid too, because most of the power of that spell isn't actually relevant here either. You could kill enemies instantly with disintegrate too, but I think it makes a point to use a stronger one.

This. Like in Pathfinder Kingmaker where there is a simple slider where each tick adds 1 to your rolls and takes 1 from AI rolls and you move it until you reach an experience you find fun without borking actual mechanical interactions.

This.
I don't find difficult to maintain highground advantage at all... You can even break ladders if you wish and melee ennemies won't especially focus on your highgrounded companions.

Just see the fight at the goblin camp.. you're 4 against 40 goblins and just going highground gives you the easy victory. All ranged goblins attack with disadvantages while you can easily shove / block melee goblins.

As much as others have defended, I do think that Topgoon has a fair point in that making a direct comparison isn't entirely fair - the spell does do more as well, and just pure adv/dis alone without the saves and ability check features would probably drop its overall spell value by about 2 or 3 spell levels, to 6th/7th. I wasn't intending to make an argument, just putting it forward as a point of contemplation for the discussion.

I don't think Foresight is an apt comparison because the only part of the spell that high-ground conditionally mimics is providing adv/disadv. for range attacks to enemies below. Even if we're just talking about combat applications - getting advantage to ALL saving throws an unlimited amount of times with no concentration is something insanely rare (maybe even only granted Foresight spell, I'll need to confirm that). That on its own is arguably more valuable than attack advantage and defense disadvantage - since we've seen how many scenarios can grant that.

Also, the benefits of Foresight is basically impossible to counter (at best it can be evened out some of it by imposing adv/disadv). An ancient dragon can fly up and attack your face and you will have adv/disadv without having to worry about losing it through concentration issues. It can grapple you, breath fire on you, and you'd make all those ability checks and saving throws at advantage. It simply cannot be reliably taken away from you short of a level 9 dispel magic.

It makes for a nice soundbite to be able to say "lol Larian is giving everyone free level 9 spells with high ground", but I honestly think it just weakens the strong logical arguments I've seen here.

Greater invisibility, shadow of moil, darkness + devil's sight are far better comparisons because those all provide similar effects with comparable weaknesses. E.g. you can make the argument that maintaining concentration and high ground is roughly the same level of difficulty, and that will better illustrate how overpowered high ground is, because now you're comparing a 4th level spell slot to a conditional but resource free effect.

Backstab is its own problem (and I think worst than height advantage) because it essentially just turns on Reckless Attack for everyone.



IMO shoving is somewhat of a wash when it comes to maintaining high ground. The pursuer will technically always get to shove first (if they dashed in instead of jumped) since they are usually the one closing in on their turn. The AI isn't incredibly tactical, but I have seen it try that from time to time.

People who can take advantage of high-ground - DEX martials or casters - are unlikely to be good at shoving due to a low Athletics score. To your point, you can plant a dedicated STR based linebacker there just to do your shoving. However, I'd argue parking an entire character there just to maintain high ground is a cost in terms of actions and damage output (especially if you have STR based fighters that have poor range attack and can be doing something far more productive with their actions). As a side note, it's rare, but bunching up on a cliff does risk your party getting launched by a Misty Step + Thunderwave combo. The Duergar Wizards in the Underdark do have a tendency to try to launch people off quite a bit (by the docks and especially on the boat).

Overall, it's not necessarily difficult to maintain high ground, but it does consume resources in its own way (which you have to factor into the calculation for what high ground advantage is worth). My point is that compared to Foresight (which just gives it to you), it is far more difficult.

I'm not too sure what you mean by a DC5 powerword kill, so I'm not going to comment on that.

I'm not going to quote your whole post here just for space reasons, but I agree foresight is stronger and will be stronger into late game. The reason I believe it's comparable now is because most low level enemies really do just throw attacks at you, particularly the sort we spend most of our time fighting on a typical playthrough. There are better spells, but "In terms of combat we are getting a significant portion of a 9th level spell for the investment of a bonus action or some movement at level 2" is a good thing to point out, because it highlights how stupid the current system is. It's much easier for people to argue that a 4th level spell isn't really THAT strong (though those people would be wrong too).

I do agree backstab is worse just for how completely free it is, like you're just never going to not want to backstab someone. It also makes absolutely zero sense and breaks immersion pretty hard when you're doing this weird leapfrog thing with opponents where they apparently just don't care that you're walking around behind them. Flanking was dumb enough with it's conga lines as is, now we have combat look like some weird dance where people are just swinging around each other each round.


Enemies absolutely don't have the advantage when it comes to shove, imo. They're always going to be the ones putting themselves near a ledge when they approach the high ground, unless you're letting them walk right up behind you for some reason. Having to use most of their movement to get to you massively limits their ability to position around you, while you have a full bar. The only ones who really can are some casters, but the AI is rarely smart enough to do much of anything with them from my experience.

Shoving is definitely weaker on most classes (though not to a reasonable amount, considering casters can shove minotaurs off cliffs), but high ground generally isn't that large, it's pretty easy to launch them off if you're positioned well. You are losing some damage by having a fighter bodyguard, but like I said, wizards being able to fully nova every fight and everyone having access to magic stuff makes that not a huge concern for the safety it provides (and the damage the fighter provides if someone does try to get up to you).

I think claiming it's more difficult than foresight when we literally just could not normally access foresight at all is a bit unfair, too. These things need to be judged in context, and we're not ever likely to have access to that spell. It is weaker and I'd be happy to use something like greater invisibility instead though. Probably a good example considering it's unlikely we'll be able to use 4th level spells regularly until pretty late game too. Though high ground is still stronger in most fights, considering it's unlimited (and free, like you said). This is on top of the normal positioning advantages of high ground, like being able to move back into cover, having much better sightlines, heavily limiting how enemies can access your location.

My argument about DC5 power word kill is to highlight another high level spell that similarly has most of its effects be pointless at our level (the number of enemies you'd need a 9th level spell to kill with ease in act 1 is zero), and the DC5 is to highlight that while technically you can fail, we'd all agree it would be a ludicrous reward for passing a check that easy. It's an intentional exaggeration of the point to show how silly the current situation is.

Sorry for awful formatting here by the way, not used to the quote system. Hope it all makes sense.