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

And to add to this, people aren't just saying make the game closer to 5e. People are protesting because the some of the changes (and the total omission of certain features) have only served to create wildly worse imbalance rather than make the game any interesting on a tactical level. Going 'lol DnD isn't balanced!' as a defense means you don't actually have a real argument, because it's actually more balanced than whatever we have now.

If height advantage/low ground disadvantage/backstab advantage didn't exist, and if player-controlled reactions/dodge action/ready actions did, people would have likely been perfectly fine with literally everything else staying as is. I know I would be.

I used to think D:OS2 was a revolutionary game, and it really is. But as the years passed, I started to realize I didn't actually enjoy the combat due to how the game's difficulty was largely balanced around the idea that you'd cheese everything you could. One could say I only enjoyed the idea of the game's combat, but not actually doing it at the end of the day. Especially when late game boss fights weren't really very tactical - they were just rocket tag on an extreme scale. If the boss ever got a turn with a party member nearby that either wasn't out of range due to height restrictions or didn't have chameleon cloak/tons of defensive buffs stacked up, that party member (or maybe your entire party if they weren't completely split up far enough away from each other, because almost every late game boss moved by teleporting themselves) was guaranteed to die no matter what. There's a reason why the majority of the D:OS2 community says the game peaked in Act 2.

I mean, really, this is how I won the vast majority of fights in D:OS2 Tactician with a full party (which is MUCH harder than a lone wolf run, which most people did to beat Tactician) with little difficulty, once I figured out how the game really worked.


That's really D:OS2 combat in a nutshell. Don't do anything like this, and the game outside of specific boss fights suddenly becomes 5x as hard. Field effects didn't actually matter much for damage reasons if you were playing optimally, they were far more dangerous because of any status effects tied to them, due to everyone's extreme mobility and the armor system blocking the damage portion unless you were dumb enough to actually move within those field effects.

That said, what I just described about D:OS2 requires a lot of effort and smart tactical thinking with how skills interacted in that game.

It's very clear that at the moment, a lot of the same design philosophy seeped into BG3. Yet it is somehow even MORE restrictive in options than D:OS2 was on that front, with most fights summed up as 'get to high ground ASAP and have everybody else attack/shove/barrelmancy things from stealth'', and it doesn't help when a lot of the core tactical features like player controlled reactions and ready actions are missing. It's rather disheartening for lack of a better word.

Don't worry I know what you mean and as you said, I usually agree with anything going to "more D&D"...

What I meant is that it's not especially because it's D&D. I'm not a fan of D&D and I never played any TT in my life...

But this is Baldur's Gate 3 and this game deserves the best. Many players just don't understand what they're talking about but as an absolute fan of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, I wanted to be here and I wanted to understand what people were talking about.
So I read the rules A LOT and I even bought the PHB.

Considering what I learned about D&D by curiosity, considering what I experienced in BG3 and considering what I experienced in the previous Larian's games...
Yes, I think a better implementation of the rules would lead to a better tactical games with more solutions,more choices, more creative opportunity to solve combats.

That's a huge part of what I'm waiting from a good tactical TB game.

I'm just a video game player. Not an absolute fan of D&D neither an absolute fan of Larian's games.
I'm just a fan of Baldur's Gate that wants the best for BG3... And according to me the best mean a better balance between D&D and Larian. D&D has much more to offer than Larian allows for now.

Your spoiler tactic would work very well in BG3. How utterly depressing.

Same people forcing same ideas on every threads. And pretend that this is the only way to do (like this dos2 tactic description). This is what utterly depressing.

Dont sweat it, we are all free to ignore the mechanics which Larian spends time coding into the game.

Admittedly my description is actually one of the more complicated tactics suited for a full party.

If you were to ask other veterans, you’d get these answers most of the time.

1) Use Pyroclastic Flow. That’s it.
2) Use Blood Rain + Grasp of the Starved.
3) Use some tactic highly reliant on the use of Skin Graft's ability to reset cooldowns and/or Apotheosis' ability to ignore source costs for source abilities.
3) Have a full ranged or a full physical party. This is encouraged by how the armor system works.

There is a common pattern in most tactics though. They abuse high ground and stealth ambush mechanics. Hell, even thievery is made super trivial by having a party member talk to a shopkeeper in order to lock them in dialogue, preventing them from moving at all, while another party member comes up from behind to rob them blind.

Is it really forcing? If multiple people agree there's an issue, they will keep talking about it while the issue exists. This happens with a wide range of topics from business systems to social issues on Twitter. Combat in Baldur's Gate 3 is no exception.

Flanked is available, I've not found anything for target too close yet.

Just there much more options, even imbalanced options. So saying that there only one way, and all other is 5 times worse, is untrue at least.

1) Five star Diner talent which double effect of every potions. You will have 100% dodge chance, 150% + resist all elemental resist without any downside.
2) Living on the edge scrolls. 2 turn immortality and you can recast as many you want. You can exchange your 1 hp vs full hp bosses or equlise to deal 50% of armor\hp damage, and always be under 100% more dmg with death wish buff.
3) Torturer talent with roots (pierce magic armor) make every melee enemy useless for 3 turn. With smoke bomb, ranged disabled too.
4) Ambidextrous talent and teleport scroll, and you can stack 6 enemies in one spot in one turn with adrenaline. Cast pyroclast source skill and fight done.
5) Swap surface skill with lava. In act2 wolf boss and ogre dying instanly.
And there a lot more, like charm enemies for 2-4 turn with grenades with huge aoe, which is lame, but there no limitation for it.

So am i really can say that the only way to play dos2 is swapping surface with lava and teleport enemies into it or being immune to dmg, or just charm enemies?! For me, no. Game have a lot more strategies. Even this pattern "Have a full ranged or a full physical party. This is encouraged by how the armor system works". For me it sound same as "why i need think in tactical game, if i can put death fog barrel and break it". I completed game with phys archer and fire mage, just 2 char without lone wolfs, and it was easy all time without any source skills.

Cool. We're basically in agreement about how cheesy D:OS2 gets then.

That said, D:OS2 still has plenty of tactical variety despite the cheese, because the game was deliberately designed to a level where everything is cheese if used properly. Even barrelmancy isn't much of a problem there, because the effort/reward ratio was pretty low compared to the things that some skills were capable of.

DnD does not work that way.

The entire point I am trying to make is that D:OS2's cheese is largely enabled by high ground/stealth ambush mechanics in some way. It was those that got imported into BG3, even if the former was changed from higher damage into straight up advantage. And the end result is that particular mechanic (and backstab advantage, which did exist in D:OS2 as a guaranteed critical hit) in combination with disengage/shove being switched from standard to bonus (and the omission of things like proper reactions and dodge action) has overpowered all of the base DnD mechanics in terms of tactical emphasis.

So all we're left with is something that's rather shallow at the end of the day. Even if we're currently locked to level 4 in BG3, the later levels won't really change that, because nothing in DnD exists that is anywhere near as powerful in order to act as a tactical counterbalance to what Larian did to the base mechanics. Combat in D:OS2 can be pretty fun once you figure things out, though you can get burned out rather quickly if you don't mix it up. Combat in BG3 is a straight up chore in comparison, because the changes have more or less powercrept half the spells into irrelevancy, and everything largely boils down to a race to high ground/shove spam. And maybe other party members attacking/shoving from stealth to burst down an enemy or two at the start of a fight.

(And again, there's also a reason I don't go after barrelmancy and field effects - they are symptoms rather than an actual problem. At the end of the day, they actually do add tactical variety to BG3 in their own way, while the high ground stuff and everything else I mentioned specifically takes that away.)

From my side, yea. I understand that some people may not like some moments, and its okay that they talking about it.
But It seems like people trying to convince you and others that you need feel bad about height, advantages and some other stuff. And if you not, so you type of person, who don't understand how good game\balance looks like and no point to talk with you, and play your DOS3_not_baldur_game alone.
But may be im wrong

I don't think it's fair to say that people explaining a point as to how particular mechanics cause huge ongoing balance issues is somehow morally wrong. If you have an argument otherwise that's cool, I'd be happy to read it, but if you're just going "i disagree" to a well thought out argument of course people are going to assume your opinion isn't worth engaging with?

I'm not sure what else you'd really expect someone to do there. Saying it's "utterly depressing" and that it's always the same people "forcing same ideas" every thread is just really not constructive in any way. Same deal with "well you can just not use X mechanic", like everyone knows you can do things in other ways, the argument is that we should have an actual reason to.

I think it'd be nice if Baldur's Gate 3 actually explained that "Advantage" is Max(2d20) and "Disadvantage" is Min(2d20).

I can understand that it's confusing when people read forum posts and see members talking about Advantage from higher ground being over-tuned and some folks misinterpret it as any height advantage.

I usually like to point out that were not talking about removing all benefits of high ground. It's just that Advantage (Max 2d20) on attacks and disadvantage (Min 2d20) on attacks from enemies is too much for moving a few pixels in the game.

Moving up to higher ground doesn't even count as rough terrain or climbing speed, so we're talking about how lobsided combat can be when higher ground already has the benefits it does in 3D space + favorable Advantage and Disadvantage. It has other distortions to game balance, but that's the shortest explanation I have.

Here are threads you can read through if you are interested in learning more.
Megathread on Height Adv/Dis and Backstab
How the Current Meta Limits Tactical Options

But this is exactly what im talking about. "huge ongoing balance issues"? Is it? For me this like 25 pages thread "how bad movement in this game" . After 30 hour with friends and alone, i never had this thoughts. But may be i should be mad as other people, i don't know.

If talk about height stuff, i found this good for me in this game (know nothing about dnd)
1) It make some fight harder, than it is. It always good for me. Harpy, goblin ambush in village, many other. You have this disadvantage and you need deal with it somehow. May be you will rush to them, may be use x10 jump and attack\push, may be will use damaging flask (which have 100% accuracy). This is strategy and opportunity to move you character, and i like it (in dos2 you just staying and attacking from one position, which is boring).
Without disadvantage, you can switch to crossbow for every character and focus fire every enemy with no problem. Why move, why hide.
2) Height advantage not always free. Many times you fight for this exactly because it good (rush with melee char, to clear it for your team), or not. Your choice again.
3) Height stuff not make 56 or something spells useless (but i don't know skill for sure). Highground not totally free, and not always available, so skills which gives you advantage, still will be useful, just because should remove disadvantage\give advantage as usual.
4) It still accuracy right? Not double damage or something. I guess if calculate damage for one player in act1, who sometimes was on highground, sometimes not, you damage probably will be same, because again, its accuracy and not 100% extra dmg.

And even if you no need 500 iq to reach highground, it still something. And this push\jump stuff. I played as warlock with friends(i thought warlock is mage with some cool skills). Omg, 17 hours of eldrich blast. At least he have imp. I don't wanna say boring, but most fun was exactly when i did something "fun" as larian added in game. So if you remove height stuff, jump\push because it broken, some surface fire+acid combo, what should i do in game? Just keep clicking on button with no brain?

Backstab in opposite side for me. This not add any complexity in game, AI not using it at all. So it not good, not bad (but why true strike still in game). Just cheap accuracy to make melee character no feel like trash i guess.

So i will be angry, if Larian will listen community and remove all this stuff. i hope they not xd

Sure, but again here you're just not really explaining why things are the case, you're just kind of insisting that they are. I think this does stem from you not knowing much about the system, but advantage is a huge deal in DnD, there are some incredibly powerful spells dedicated to giving you advantage and enemies disadvantage against you.
Simply claiming that it doesn't make spells useless because sometime you might fail to gain the high ground doesn't really make much sense, because why wouldn't you be better off spending your spells on gaining the high ground? What about all the abilities that give melee attackers advantage that are useless because you can always walk behind an enemy?

I don't believe it's much of an argument to say "well some fights don't have high ground so entire major abilities being turned into niche uses is fine". Like come on man, your point 3 here is "These 56 skills aren't useless, but also I don't know what they are" lol

From the EA so far, it's incredibly easy to gain and maintain the high ground in almost every fight, and the AI does a very poor job at forcing you off it. It also removes any real creative tactics, because it is almost always the main goal of every fight. It is generally the strongest position, drastically increases how much damage you're putting out, drastically decreases how much damage you're taking, there's not really any situation where you aren't going to want to just take high ground and stay there.

I'm not sure what your point about warlock is here either, like you picked a warlock, a class primarily focused on blasting, and are annoyed you spent a lot of time blasting? You get a few limited spell slots (that should be stronger because normally there's a limit on long resting), and you throw around eldritch blast a lot. That's what pretty much all warlocks do. it's still pretty much all you're doing in BG3 too, that's just the classes identity.

I think a lot of your points here have some validity, early game DnD combat can absolutely be a bit boring, but you're neglecting the other issues created by the solutions.
The issue here isn't that they tried to incorporate new stuff, it's that there's very little consideration about how that impacts other things. Jumping around constantly heavily reduces your need to care about protecting your backline, and takes away a lot of the rogue classes identity. Giving you effectively permanent advantage in most fights, and often effectively permanent disadvantage against you, hurts the amount of freedom you have in positioning and makes classes that can create similar as an effect later on much less impactful feeling. It also makes abilities that don't use a roll to hit much less impactful feeling.

I honestly feel as if you might benefit from rereading some of the discussions people have had on this topic, because like the answer to your last part in point 1 has been talked about a heap. You're not just going to be standing still like an idiot if you don't have permanent disadvantage against enemies, they're still trying to kill you and the high ground is still absolutely an advantageous position, it's just not universally the most important element of every single relevant fight in the game anymore.


If you're not keen on rereading those discussions, at least read up on bounded accuracy a bit, or skim through some of the core rules for 5e, they're all pretty easily found online. I don't think it's fair for others if you're hopping into a discussion about a system you admit you don't really understand, and declaring their takes on the changes wrong or that it's somehow depressing to read them.

Height advantage just don't use it? Backstab advantage don't use it?

That's what i got when i was complaining about barrels and aoe arrows so just apply it here??.Don't use it ??... If those didn't go away, no way height advantage is changing the only thing that actually makes sense and is cool.
Even if you don't use those things the game is still ridiculously easy..

i agree backstab is broken but that's in part because jump/disengage - Attack of opportunity is broken.


If you remove situational Height advantage there is really nothing to do in the game tactically. 5e is so vanilla - boring due to the fuckin concentration limit and max 4 party limit. So the cross class combos are hardly there. And all you do is Auto attack especially at this low levers. Ow yeah i get Menacing Attack big deal it's still a glorified auto attack. :))

Why even bother with other stuff when you can just surprise and AA kill everything in two turns. Even if you don't use H.advantage and B.advantage you extend combat by one turn 2 MAX and that's if you unlucky... Everything still dies because base HP is so low for everything. And spells and abilities that do stuff are so rare thx to idiotic concentration limit.
Better of just throwing stuff, boot, other enemies whatever and enjoy how ridiculous everything is.

if you think changing Height advantage to +2 will make huge difference well whatever. Nothing will change.

Oh and lets not forget the AI. Stupid bad be it in Bg 3 or in Solasta it's so fucking bad it makes everything broken and easy.

And now you want them to remove the only good situational thing in the game and that's fighting for high ground. Meanwhile jump/disengage AoO will stay broken yeah sure GJ, way to make the game better.

Yea so you're litteraly asking not to enjoy any verticality in the game^^

Advantage is not the only thing highground could give as a bonus.

No more advantage for highground = many more viable and balanced possibilities to have an advantage = more tactical decision/choices.

Highground could give other bonuses than advantage : +2 to attack rolls, +2 to AC, better range, with a few adjustment to the maps it could also be a kind of "cover" mechanics (because you can often hide more easily or break the ennemie's lign of sight).

It could still be very interresting without being THE only thing.

What would change is that highround and/or backstab wouldn't probably be enough to have a satisfying %to hit. Players would have meaningfull choices to make : spend ressources to have advantages ? use bless ? trying to attack with a %to hit that is not that good ?

Players would have to be more creative and they would have a better control of their %to hit with choices and tactical decisions to make (there are many ways in D&D both for melee and ranged characters including basic actions like help, shove to prone, hide, flanking,...)

My personnal opinion is that something like that would be better but I'm totally fine with those enjoying Highground as it is... But all this looks like facts and personnal preferences aside, I'm still waiting for someone to explain why something like this would be bad for the game.

Those that doesn't want to think about their %to hit already have loaded dices.

Well that's what apparently passes as a fix in BG 3 not to use it. Why i don't know but that's the take from Larian so far.

THere is no reason to be creative when best option is always just to nuke stuff due to low HP. Why cast bless or whatever when you can just use something that will give you more damage you only have 4 Concentrations to use and low action economy. Even stuff with more hp dies fast..

And without good highground bonus i will not even bother with that. Right now it's the only rewarding thing in the game. When i get to highground i get the feeling a actually did something tactical. Maybe that just me. But i do agree that backstab feels like chees due to jump/disengage. Melee are now just frogs..:)

That's really strange to talk with you because I agree with many things but we really think differently^^

What you said also apply to highround and how Larian give us advantages
There is no reason to be creative when best option is always just to go higher to increase your % to hit.
Why cast bless for a +2 to +4 bonus to attack roll when you can just backstab or go higher to have a way better bonus to your %to hit ?

A +2 bonus is a good bonus, especially if it stack with usual advantages or bless. As I said a few tweaks on the maps could also lead to more possibilities to "cover" in many situations. In BG3 all weapons have the same range. Isn't it a good bonus to have a better range than your ennemies ? isn't that one of the MAIN goal of being higher in history ?

I also have the feeling that going higher is something tactical in the game... But I'd love to have MORE than only 1 or 2 tactical possibilities and reading to you I'm sure we would agree.
Keep also in mind that a lot of D&D stuff to have an advantage are build on synergies between your characters... And I'm sure you'll agree that BG3 lacks of synergies.

˄Height advantage is HUGE in combat especially where you have range elements be it defense, accuracy, range, moral, everything it's the biggest advantage you can get combined all of those and you can stop huge numbers...

So i'm totally ok with a bigger numbers granted. I would be more happy if you could go prone to counter it but that would be asking to much just like overwatch. IF you were on ladder in the middle of nothing i would be fine with just range bonus...:)

As is, i know how important normal terrain height advantage is i mean +3 or whatever would be fine as well but that's not gonna fix the problems you have with combat. Because IF highground advantage is to big, then advantage it's to big for everything.
Due to the things i said before Hp and stuff... i was exaggerating a bit but still you get the point.


Like i said already they need to fix jump/disengage first before anything else. If you wasted 1 or two turns just to get to high ground no one would cry it's op.

But it looks like nothing is gonna change anyway so it's all pointless... and is just random forum fighting. So i'll use my Height advantage thank you and hope for mods and really hard and not a gimmicky Nighmare mode.