Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused Feedback: Spells

About SUMMON COMPANION:

- Boar: I think this one is broken, the boar charge simply does not work nearly as well as it should, I don't know if they fixed it in patch 3. I wanted to use it so bad but this summon it was not worth it at all. If this skill was fixed and the hitting chance was slightly higher (boars are agile) this one would be great.

- Bear: Works great

- Giant Spider: Works great and it's my favorite, the web casting ability works great for massive battles

- Raven: I think that not every animal companion should be useful in fights, some could be more useful outside of battles, interacting with the world, so I feel this one could use the flying ability in a more meaningful way. You cannot push things around like the other animals can, so you can reach some high grounds but cannot do anything with the things you find there. Maybe if you could interact with light itens and characters things could become interesting, making this summon more useful to have by your side, like picking up a key somewhere high and bringing it to you. talking about battles, maybe picking up some small goblins / itens and letting them go during flight would be awesome. Rend vision + 1 hp is definitely not worth it.

- Wolf: Between the goading ability + HP of the Bear or the web + poison dmg of the spider there's really not a reason to choose the wolf. The prone ability of the wolf is not worth it because of it's low % chance, this summon ends up dying faster than you could use the prone ability effectively. I think the wolf should have some more agility advantages besides the Jump/Disengage skill. Maybe if it had some higher hitting chance + extra low bleeding dmg OR higher hitting chance + attacking earlier in a fight could make me think about choosing this one over the bear or the spider.

Edit: During my gameplay I thought the wolf had higher chances of finding hidden things but turns out the chance seemed pretty even between all animals when I used them all at the same places. Maybe this would be something unique to the wolf, having a stronger smell gives him higher chances of finding stuff.

Now one really important question, why does the summon ability only works outside of battle? In baldur's gate 1 and 2 was like this as well?
Because I could not really see a motive for this, why wouldn't a mage ou a hunter be able to summon during battle?
If you wanted to make things a little bit harder for summoners to fight, maybe just being able to summon once or tooking 2 turns to summon something would work.
i don't really see the reason here (don't know if things changed in patch 3)

It would be so cool if you moved the camera into a silence sphere if the sound effects and music were to stop

I've already said this elsewhere, but since this seems like a proper place to bring it up:

The one-summon limit is completely awful and guts the iconic gameplay for many sorts of D&D summoners. Additionally, it results in incredibly unintuitive interactions where spells clash with each other due to being implemented as summons, especially Mage Hand and Find Familiar. You can't use Mage Hand and have a familiar at the same time? You can't summon anything else if you have a familiar? Pure frustration.

The entire fun of playing a summoner comes from amassing a swarm and from choosing your summons to have them complement each other. What's the point of restricting them like this when the source material was plainly balanced around having multiple summons at once?

EDIT: Another observation after playing a bit more:

Enemies have generally been given more HP to account for additional ways of damaging them, especially via fields.

However, since spells that lack field interactions weren't buffed to compensate, this means that any spell that does damage or cares about HP but which doesn't create a field is currently very weak. This is most obvious with Sleep, which will almost never be able to hit more than one monster, and very rapidly becomes useless even at that.

@batazin:
Animal companions are not summon spells. The ranger seeks an animal and becomes its friend. The PHB version looks pathetically weak though. Especially because he orders the animal to attack instead of attacking himself.

- Larian chose to do it as ritual spell. This means you can do it only outside of combat but it costs no spell slot. I think it is fine this way.
- It is not a spell so it should not interact with other spells at all. This means it should not prevent you from summoning something else and it should not disappear when summoning something else.
- Animal companions (and probably the imp of the warlock too) should scale with the class level of its owner. HP, AC and hit chance go up with level, else they will be totally useless at higher levels.
- Personally I like that the animals are very different.

I agree that there should be no summon limit. You have the concentration mechanic, else you can do what you want. So the ranger can have a familiar, an animal and a concentration spell, for example a summon.
In the same way, wizards should have a familiar, animate dead and a concentration summon at once.

Another vote for the Shield spell and a rework of reactions in general. At higher levels and with certain feats, a spellcaster can use spells as reactions. Or maybe not, maybe you want to belay that attack of opportunity in anticipation of using the Shield or Absorb Elements spell later on.

Proposal for the patch 3 spellcasting system. Sorry if this has already been brought up, couldn't find it via searching.

If you select a spell but don't choose the level in the widget it should default to level 1 when you choose a target. Or, the base spell on the hotbar should be level 1 and the widget menu should have leveled spells only.

There's been several instances when I went to cast a spell in combat but forgot to choose a level, and so when I went to click on my target I walked up to them or melee'd them instead of casting a spell. Likewise, when I want to cast a spell outside of combat if I forget to choose a level I would, again, either walk up to my target or I would enter dialogue with them when I didn't want to.

This is also something that would be nice to have as a toggle, e.g. 'Spell Slot Level Auto-selection' or something like that.

When repelling blast knocks a target down, they need to stay prone until their turn.

Colossus slayer should stack with hunter's mark (since hex stacks with agonizing blast).

The only healing items should be potions and magic items, not food.

True Strike is bad. No two ways about it. Even being able to hold it for a turn before discharging it does not fix the fact that you are choosing to spend one action to improve a second action by a lesser amount than simply taking the action twice would.

Example: You have a 65% chance to hit. With True Strike this increases to a 100% chance to hit. Not sure the actual number.

Or you could attack twice at 65% chance to hit. This gives you a +65% chance of damaging your target (compared to True Strike's +45%). The only possible use for True Strike is if for whatever reason you can't get line of sight to the target this turn, but will be able to next turn. This is so insanely situational that you're better off picking up a second damage cantrip because you're more likely to run into an enemy that resists fire than you are a battlefield that offers 100% concealment across a whole 30 ft move.

Sometimes guaranteeing a hit is better than chancing it because of situations, and right now it works really well with classes that have multi attacks or action surges.

Good review! A couple of things about Darkness though....

1. Only creatures that can see through magical darkness should be able to see through, into, or out of it. So, in the example you gave, the drow actually wouldn't be able to see out of it unless that drow also happened to be a warlock with the Devil's Sight invocation. On that note, the devs do need to fix it so that Devil's Sight works correctly and actually does let you see through it, per it's description in the 5e Player's Handbook "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet." Otherwise, it's almost worthless because it gives everyone attacking into and out of it disadvantage. This spell is the bread and butter of several warlock builds because of Devil's Sight.

2. You should be able to cast it on an object you are holding. This is a massive element of the functionality of the spell. "If the point you choose is on an object you are holding or one that isn't being worn or carried, the darkness emanates from the object and moves with it." This in particular really ruins one of the coolest options for warlocks in 5th edition D&D: cast darkness on something that you are holding, and then run around eldritch blasting and stabbing enemies with advantage while they all have disadvantage attacking you. (This only works if they fix Devil's Sight also)

This spell is currently my biggest issue with the game. The only reason I bothered creating an account for the forums was to bring this to their attention so they can correct it. They way this spell is currently implemented is a major buzzkill for my favorite class.

Jump is a first level spell that basically works as a free second level Misty Step spell every round for 10 turns. Seems over-tunded esp. for strength-based characters which are too much buffed in this game thanks to jump/disengage and shove (and over-incentivization of flanking).



You obviously didn't play as a Warlock, let alone have two in your party. Hex is a CLUNKY TIME-WASTER as currently implemented. It is a spell you cast/re-apply nearly every turn as a bonus-action. The secondary curse effect has little to no in-game effect, yet we have to got through a menu to manually select an attribute to curse. These are the things that begs for STREAMLINING homebrew!

Simply make the secondary curse effect curse ALL attributes AUTOMATICALLY (Warlocks nerfed relative to other "full casters" by near unrestricted access to long rest and could do with a little buff anyway). If for some reason this is seen as overpowered, simply balance disadvantage with a smaller flat penalty to all attributes. Combat has been criticized as too slow-paced, and this *will* save a lot of time and annoyance.

I would prefer they leave Hex as it is in 5e but I can right click on the Hex spell in the UI and it is then set to "Auto-mode" and always automatically uses either the highest ability of my enemy or the stat with what the enemy is fighting, e.g. Dex for archers, Str for two-handed fighters, etc.

Thanks for reading. If you read up the thread a bit, you can find where the discussion regarding darkness has been had already, at great length.


I did. It is clunky, yes. You have to reapply hex every time you successfully kill the hexed target before your turn comes around again, which is often. It's clunky in game, no denying, but that's a UI issue. The spell itself works as written. The secondary effect is usually minor in the tabletop as well, but having it be simply "disadvantage on all ability checks" would be grossly overpowered for such a simple spell that offers no save on application and no save out. Breaking other things to make up for other arbitrary breaks in the system is the Larian way of doing things; it's not a good way of doing things, so suggesting that they over-tune a warlock spell because warlocks are suffering due to a different break that they made in the system is a very bad suggestion, especially when the spell is not exclusive to warlocks. This would not save time particularly - only a small amount, for one spell. It's a band-aid fix on one aspect of one part of a problem, which is the poor UI design and interaction. That is what they should be fixing. If you feel like hex for warlocks is clunky, and are isolating that complaint there, then what about literally every other spell caster, with literally every other spell? Same amount of clicks as hex for all of them (Warlocks don't choose spell level, but every other caster does, using the same interface as hex). There is no reason to break this spell, when the problem that needs to be fixed is a much bigger one.

The important detail about hex is that it only affects ability checks, not attack rolls or saving throws. How often do enemies really make ability checks?
-Perception to see hidden characters
-Contested athletics/acrobatics to avoid being shoved.

Hexing all ability scores would have roughly the same effect as hexing only the targets dex or str (whichever is higher).

That may sound like the best of two worlds, but still miss the mark as well as add largely needless complexity to the game.

It doesn't normally do much of anything to curse the highest attribute, nor highest attack attribute. For instance, cursing Intelligence or Charisma of Wizards or Sorcerers likely has no in-game effect whatsoever.

Skill checks are not opposed by NPCs in the game as far as I know (Shove being possibly the only exception), so I suspect it's completely useless out of combat/in social settings.

Some possible scenarios where I think cursing attributes may conceivably have any effect at all:

Strength: Very limited usefulness. May be useful if you plan to use Shove (and the enemy has better athletics skill than acrobat), or if the enemy can Jump and you use Hex as an opener before they actually get to jump. Hex as an opener is a very questionable move as you aggro the enemy for little effect.

Dexterity: May again be useful if you use Shove (and the enemy has better acrobat skill than athletics). Since initiative order is rolled once at onset of combat, it won't affect initiative unless used as an opener (before rolling initiative).

Wisdom: No usefulness. Total trap option.

Intelligence: No usefulness. Total trap option.

Charisma: No usefulness. Total trap option.

Constitution: No usefulness. Total trap option.

Unless I'm missing something significant, and please correct me if you think I am, then having the option to curse specific attributes is purely a waste of time in the VAST majority of cases. It stands to reason then that streamlining the curse secondary effect to automatically affect all attributes is the most sensible method, and that having Hex give disadvantage to all ability checks isn't even remotely unbalancing in the context of BG3.

Hexing enemy NPCs makes them aggro you, which kind of defeats the purpose of lowering their perception to aid you in stealth. It (cursing Wisdom) is conceivably useful for pickpocketing where traders may/may not get a perception check. But given pickpocketing in the game is implemented as a gimmick/legal exploit (quick, no risks, huge rewards) with realistically guaranteed success when you know what to do/can easily savescum, it really doesn't matter

Hex Constitution would have a benefit if concentration would work correctly and can't just be broken by using create water + frost ray cantrip to make a caster go prone (aka incapacitated).

Intelligence would be nice if a enemy caster then could fail an Arcana check and would not cast shield as a reaction because they don't recognize that your wizard is casting a blast spell (a little bit far fetched, i know, and not covered in DnD 5th RAW).

Jump should be used as part of movement, not as a (bonus) action, so hexing Str should only have an impact regarding how high a character can jump.

To set things to a kind of automatic mode is just a suggestion.
Take any spell, e.g. magic missile, right click on the spell in your hotbar and a moving, glowing border appears. Then you e.g. always use your highest possible spell slot.
Or you see a drop-down menu, were you can set a standard option.

Actually this is incorrect. Maintaining concentration is actually a Constitution Saving Throw, not an ability check. So hex wouldn't affect it. It is poorly named, I admit

This is only half true. By default, 5e characters can jump up to their strength score if they move at least 10 feet, and 5 feet otherwise. Characters can jump 3+Str modifier high if they move 10 feet, and only half that distance otherwise. Since Hex affects ability checks, and not the score itself, hex wouldn't affect jump distance/heights in most cases.
The DM can allow checks to jump higher or farther, but honestly I doubt Larian would spend effort implementing such an obscure and situational rule.

A minor gripe I guess but bothers me every time it's a problem. Magic Missile does not have a travel path. It should never hit a wall. If you see them, you hit them