Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Great news! Height advantage not that impactful.

I just don't want Pandemonica to feel mobbed is all.

I think balance will come, it is early alpha after all. I mean it was only October the game came out. Never would I use a dex, crossbow build on a wizard, that sounds more like a temporary exploit that will be fixed. Wizards really shouldn't even be able to equip a crossbow, just like they cannot use heavy armor. I generally don't bother to attack from the back on my warriors except for maybe the first attack I generally just keep my rogues on the back. I agree with the frightened being totally broken and needs to be fine tuned.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't they say recently they are going to make jump an action? I also agree about the healing food, I mean that is a touch much. Give a buff for food, or heal out of battle with it, but a pork shoulder shouldn't basically heal you for full health in a battle.

I agree with you here Pandemonica.

Part of it is also that backstab is a few pixels away from what fighter would naturally do. Whereas, Higher Ground and Threatened put Wizard, Warlock, and Cleric in awkward positions. The fighter would attack them from the front anyways, but in Baldur's Gate 3 now they're jumping to the back. The Wizard, Warlock, and Cleric have to go through the chore of avoiding threatened.

I don't feel mobbed, but could do without the snark comment about being mobbed on. I was asked why I felt melee was OP and I answered it. Generally, I will answer any question as long as it isn't some slightly veiled snark (if that was your intention, if it wasn't I will mark it up to just misunderstanding intention due to it being so late).

It wasn’t a snarky comment. When multiple people respond to one person with an opposing view, it can seem like that person is being ganged up on. I just wanted to let you know I probably wouldn’t have responded had I known Saito had already done so.

Just clearing up my position.

If it is still in early alpha it's pretty concering how few significant changes there has been to the gameplay. Most likely Larian is content with how things are and it's roughly how it will stay until release.

I checked but could not find it in the PHB, DMG, XGtE, or TCoE.

Maybe you have seen it in some Unearthed Arcana?

Weird, Wolfram Alpha has never given me any warnings, be it from private or company network; you can google it, it is safe.

And no, 3.5 does not average 4, I cannot even follow what idea you had here.

Wrong. If you don't have a clue about a subject matter, don't try to lecture people who do. I admit I did not account for criticals, but that effect would be negligible, especially considering criticals will often deal overkill damage (Goblins).


In my gaming experience, the base chances to hit were generally way above 50% (at this moment I can't pinpoint a number, though). It is very well possible that Larian adopts a "missing is boring" stance, so we get something like a 80% base hit chance on average. In that case, advantage would only translate to +-3. I think assuming an even distribution is as accurate as we can get until the numbers are tweaked.


Height advantage adds a tactical layer (terrain) to the game, which similar games like Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder Kingmaker simply do not have at all, which is a good thing in my book. This, of course, has to be impactful, or most people will just ignore it. Seriously, would you bother with high ground if the only effect were +2 AC?

Why would anyone bother with equipping a shield if it only gives +2 AC?

+2 is not an insignificant bonus.

Because equipping a shield is like ... A LOT easier and less of a hassle than seeking high ground?

Of course you would bother if it was ANOTHER +2 bonus.

But obviously you won't care about any other method to get an advantage if you can have it through an easier mechanic....

I'm not even particularly invested in "advantage" battle, but still I'm not really sure how anyone could argue with a straight face that "only 3.5" is a minor bonus on a scale from 1 to 20.

I get a cross-scripting attack warning on that site. Is the difference a +3.5 to hit every attack that you have height advantage? Could someone copy the article to text here please?

[img]http://ibb.co/s30GYwh[/img]

Problem with the advantage is not the avarage plus it gives to you mathematically but instead gives u a chance to roll 2x dice where as u should roll only 1,
and on top of that you are allowed to pick the highest roll so its pretty broken. It really gives a big advantage as the name suggests,
but also makes spells more exploitable.

On the sneak attack perspective ppl usually agree it makes a rogue OP but theres also that:

BG 3 already nerfed sneak attack by requiring 2 adjent characters to gain that opportunity. Normally you only need one,
and considering the fact that you will always have a warrior kind in your party, you should be landing them in every turn as long as you aim for it.

On the advantage/disadvantage what PHB says:


Highground can fit in the aspect of the enviroment somehow.
Standing on a table shouldnt give it to u for a melee hit, but it certainly does if you are actually in higher ground, afterall..


But things get broken when it comes to a range attack..u can gain half cover bonus (+2) but pure advantage is a bit too much.
However the game is still EA and what I think is maybe codingwise it might be hard for engine to separate that yet..It just might be
the right approach to tweak those after eveything is done so the every situation that game will cover will be on the table.

As I said in my earlier post, +5 is an exaggeration of the benefit of advantage. I still do not agree with you that a flat distribution is the best estimate, since you are allowing the extreme cases to drive the average too low in this case. If you truncate the distribution to eliminate very low (only 19 and 20 hit) and very high (anything 3 and above hits) you already get to a +4.067 (calculated via your Wolfram link).

I also think that you are underestimating the importance of small boni in 5E. This edition of D&D operates under a scheme called "bounded accuracy" which makes bonuses to hit very hard to come by. Stat bonus will max out at +5 (unless you are a level 20 barbarian, which is very much an edge case) and proficiency will max out at +6. If Larian follows the treasures in the DMG then the maximum magic item bonus will be +3...

Under this regime ANY bonus is impactful, even a lowly +1. This is not pathfinder where you can stack bucketfulls of feats, items, and stats to achieve a +75 to hit if you min/max up the wazoo.

Especially when it's in addition to a -3.5 penalty for the enemy.

Lol dude who's trying to lecture who? There's nothing wrong about the statement "it's 3.5 if you don't account for critical rolls", you don't even need Wolfram Alpha to see rolling two lone D20's approaches a value of 3.5. You can do it with two dice and scratch paper. I did that when I first go on the forum here, but instead of telling people, "You're wrong" I went to Google:
A Source
Other Sources

There's no reason to be crass because you used Wolfram Alpha. Some of us studied probability and statistics over a decade ago, but we don't flex on a forum community about it. (Because who cares, it's a forum). There already are more in-depth analysis on advantage online. Internet forums are full of anecdotes and often there was prior discussion before the anecdote became popular. Some even remember the story behind the anecdote better than I do. (Forums are great that way).


Sorry for not being perfect

Advantage being valued at +5 is an anecdote that has been used in good faith because a natural 20 can double the damage, always hit, etc. I'm glad that you're willing to admit that you did not account for critical rolls, but you can't consider double damage and a guaranteed hit negligible. During an entire campaign you will be fighting more than goblins. There are also other external factors to consider in Baldur's Gate 3 with mechanics such a shove, disadvantage on incoming attacks, enemies with lowered AC, etc. adding even more value to high ground. So is it just +3.5? It's a magnitude greater than 3.5.
Statisticians have to account for external factors, you cannot call it 3.5 and walk away.

I'd rather say it's about +5 than calculate values for each of those, I do have a day job and I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 in my free time.

I'm fairly uncomfortable with the Original Post.

It seems to aim at correcting the technical analysis sometimes/often done about High-Ground advantage (with lower case a). It also suggests that some people intentionally spread misinformation. But the post itself is fairly criticisable. Two points :

a) The post only discusses the Advantage gained from High-Ground (with upper case A, i.e. the mechanism).

But High-Ground also means that enemies have Low-Ground and attack with Disadvantage. This far from negligible.

So the conclusion about "height advantage" being not as bad as many people claim is really just about Advantage not being as powerful as a sometimes claimed. Maybe Darun only meant to talk about Advantage, but then it would have been better to not involve height/High-Ground in the discussion and avoid the advantage/Advantage ambiguity.

b) The assumption of uniformity of hit chances along the whole spectrum is very criticisable. You don't encounter enemies that you have a 10% chance of hitting that often, I would think (depends on GM of course).
If you go for uniform hit chance between 30% and 90%, say, you find an average equivalent bonus of +4.1.

I'm not saying the Original Post is itself a clear vector of the disinformation (intentional or not), incorrectness and misconceptions it purports to rectify, but I find it uncomfortably close to that.


Having said that, the really interesting topic (to me at least) is Advantage. Which I'll make another topic for.

It's also important to consider that the first post is about two d20's rolling in a vacuum. Not necessarily in DnD or Baldur's Gate 3.