Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Remove Height and Backstab as Sources of Advantage/Disadvantage

It's been repeated a lot, but one more voice to the choir.

I feel like advantage should be harder to come by

As a tabletop player, I will add my +1.

The game as of right now could just as well be called: "Everest Total War: a dream of climbing."

Its about the only relevant strategy to win fights, climb as high as you can and blast them from above, melee characters are pointless, they get rekt by high ground fire and dont deliver nearly as much damage as ranged classes with "free" advantage.

I wont even comment on backstabing, its complete nonsense.

Ranged characters do have lower hit rates at close up combat. Also height in reality would provide advantage / Disadvantage and applying as such makes sense. As for Flanking also it is a good balance. Ranged characters do have disadvantage with ranged attacks in close combat. If you look at % to hit its lower when the target is close to you. And thats from the perspective of someone who prefers melee combat. Its is used in actual play and it makes sense to have it in game from the perspective of every other game with similar combat. Necromunda / Xcom apply advantage to characters on higher ground. In real life higher ground also gives you an advantage as does flanking. There is a reason those tactics are used in combat in real life because its hard to defend against someone attacking down towards you like wise its hard to defend when you have 2 opponents on opposite sides of you attacking you because your attention has to be in 2 places at once. Those 2 factors make sense why the attackers with that advantage against you would have advantage on attacks against you. 0 Complaints at all about the feature as it makes sense and is part of actual game mechanics.

The terrain already provides terrain-related benefits. It's also why D&D has speeds for climbing and rough terrain, to capture the benefit of terrain.

Advantage is a specific term for the game, literally Max(2d20). Disadvantage is a specific term for the game, literally Min(2d20). Advantage is not a composite for real life terrain advantages.

Having terrain benefits and a swing of AdvantageFOR/DisadvantageAgainst is overkill.

I'd be fine with them giving advantage if characters in melee got +2 cover AC the attacker's line of site is blocked. As it stands now, battles are a race to high ground because it's the easiest way to gain and keep advantage.

There is a difference between "an advantage" and the D&D mechanical term "Advantage." I don't deny that high ground can make ranged attacks easier, but high ground giving the mechanical capital-A Advantage is too powerful.

And flanking isn't in BG3. Flanking would be better than what is present now, which is just you get Advantage if you go behind someone.
So you have 0 complaints about something you think is a game mechanic, but that in reality isn't in the game...hmmm.

I would do like the old cRPG's did and have "normal" (advantage is given out like candy, everyone can bonus disengage) and "5e core rules" (advantage has strict requirements, only rogues can bonus disengage) difficulty settings. I don't particularly like 5e rules, but they are extremely balanced to the point than +1 or -1 here or there can break everything from the over-tuning let alone adding new sources of advantage.

Yes, height advantage makes sense and that's why 2e had a bonus for high ground that everyone tried to get. In 5e, all of that is already assumed that you are getting the best possible position to your skills and the enemy is doing the same. If you add advantage for the realism there, you are double dipping the benefits without adding other downsides to the fight, because it is baked into the rule system in other ways.

I think cRPG's are incredibly well suited for the older rule sets where you meticulously added +2 for this and -1 for that and it made combat take a long time at a table, but can be instant for the game to compute. Sadly, this is a 5e based game, and as such, shouldn't change balancing mechanics when it isn't necessary to translate to the cRPG medium. Because afaik they are not allowed by Wizards to significantly deviate from the 5e rules, and these minor tweaks can be disasterous for balance if you don't go all in with customizing the rules.

You can't have it both ways; you can't have the dumbed down ruleset and add the "realism" of "considering the details of the situation" to a system designed to account for all of that with hand waves. The problem is most computer gamers want detailed, nuanced systems since cRPG's allow for near infinite complexity to be happening behind the scene and that isn't 5e's mindset at all.

5e is great for keeping a fast pace at a table of six people all doing mental math. That said, I view the decision to use it in a cRPG as "well, that's the devil's bargain Larian had to make to get the license from Wizard's to make BG3." So I'll give them a lot of slack for having to try to make that system seem like it has any depth in a cRPG and focus on the story being told. I think BG3 could have been pretty slick if Larian had been free to use their own "interpretation" of the D&D ruleset. But, since they can't, I do think they should just accept that they can't try to squeeze in extra advantage here and there where it makes total sense from fun, gameplay, and realism etc, but breaks this brittle, fragile... I mean streamlined, quick paced, and highly balanced rule system from Wizards of the Coast TM.

IP laws are a bitch.

I've never played 5e and have no preference that way. That said, I find the backstab and high ground rules the biggest detriment to the tactical combat in BG3.

It feels pretty stupid strafing behind the enemy or climbing to elevation in every fight to get a massive accuracy bonus. It's not a tactic, it's a choice and one that's less available to enemies. And the free advantage is so powerful it makes many class abilities irrelevant in comparison.

In a potential PvP scenario, imagine two Fighters doing nothing but backstabs in a 1v1 melee duel. That's how brilliant this system is. Teach the AI to do it too.

Also not a big fan of the excessive jumping, pushing and eating in combat.

Exactly! All those things are super silly and kind of ruining things. I would love it if they implemented options for core rules or not =)

I'm sure someone has posted a screenshot like this before, but this shot shows that something needs to change:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2440763064

I'm barely one meter below the enemy, which means my attack is at disadvantage. This isn't even enough of a difference for a -1 on my attack roll in a "flat bonus" system. I do think a flat bonus system is the better solution, with +1 for height difference of 5-9.9 meters, and +2 for a height difference of 10.0 meters or more. No flat bonus higher than +2. That would still provide some benefit for height, but not one which is super strong.

advantage / disadvantage mechanic is 2 rolls to succeed or 2 rolls to fail. Disadvantage which the mechanics do match the actual table top mechanics in that sense basically say if you have advantage which you would when flanking or from height means you have 2 chances keeping the better roll on a 20 sided dice to hit. If that roll is 20 means your chance is like 10% instead of 5% vs if you were at disadvantage you would have basically a 2.5% chance to hit because you would need to basically roll 20 twice back to back disadvantage means you take the worst roll of the 2 rolls. Im just using the example as it explains the mechanic easier. Essentially Advantage accounts the enemies armor vs your change to hit with the better of 2 rolls on a 20 sided dice vs disadvantage meaning your taking the lower of 2 rolls. So if your attacking from an elevated position then essentially you have advantage because your shooting from above meaning cover is more difficult and if you were attacking downwards defending is more difficult as you have more leverage in your attacks. The mechanics are based on the concept that it would provide an advantage like wise flanking is similar if targets are attacking your from both sides those targets have advantage to hit and vice versa meaning there odds are twice as good doesnt mean it will succeed but it massively increases the odds when you consider the average armor class of characters in your group being around 15.

If the enemy has advantage that 15 is turned into a 50/50 hit chance roughly same time disadvantage would if it was used against the enemy would put them at around 12.5% hit rate not accounting for the difference proficency bonus ect makes in those odds. With you always having a 5% chance to auto succeed and a 5% chance to auto fail. Based on what your fighting. Modifying the mechanic to be +1 or +2 just completely defeats the purpose of the games existing rule set. As do several other mechanics which im sure they intend to fix in a way such as wizards casting cleric spells and weapon swapping as they also break the games mechanics currently. In order to bring the rule set more in line with existing rule set. I can see some implimentation changes which make sense like the ranger had a large number of faults to begin with which still need alot of tweaking such as beast master hunters being way under powered in late game.

Same time I am sure there are tweaks that need to be accounted for in advantage / disadvantage as you would not have advantage at close range firing a bow from above the target or within 20 ft or roughly 6 m of the target. You would be at disadvantage countering the advantage from height. However from am melee perspective being 1ft above the target attacking down on the target would give you an advantage on attacks against that target as you would have more power in your swings swinging down on the target. Same time being 10ft above a medium size target you would not get that advantage because the target is out of range of your reach and vice versa. You get line of sight issues hitting a target at close range when directly above a target as you cant shoot strait down at it due to angle. This can even impact some abilities like magic missle which is basically an auto hit. Cover plays a factor there in regards to line of sight. There probably is some adjusting needs to be done with height / distance to determine advantage / disadvantage rates but essentially a target inside 6m would automatically apply disadvantage which im sure ive notice that on attacks prior with hit % decreasing till i got outside that range however the mix match of the 2 may be off. Only larion could really answer that question if its functional accounting advantage against disadvantage.

Long and short of it the mechanic should work as its intended in the games actually table top design. So I agree with advantage from flanking and height. As long as similar mechanics are applied with disadvantage which currently seems accurate.

Additionally playing melee characters mostly I have had 0 issues with completing any fight in the story arc in any patch thus far or using proper positioning to take advantage of combat though currenty mechanics do seem to be slightly over tuned with patch 4 making them not as easy as they were in patch 3 since some of the npcs gained access to multi attack yet it has been denied to us as players to be able to obtain that level to counter balance it making the fights harder but still not impossible just requiring more thought when dealing with the encounters. I found the minotaurs were much more difficult on the patch 4 play through but the spider matriarch was probably a 15 second fight due to preplanning. The minotaurs makin the multiple attacks over using the shove mechanic themselves and not taking fall damage when leaping down on a target was kinda over exaggerated. Hit points were roughly accurate however Multi-Attack should not have been included with them they were basically leap attack and then attack twice more - over tuned. It should be tuned down and they should be taking fall damage jumping down 30 feet / 10 meters or more. Should also be getting around 175 xp a piece for killing them with a 4 character party. As over tuned as they are with multi attack ect i would expect them to be treated like cr 5/6 instead of cr 3 as a fight.

@acatlas, you seem to be arguing that
1.) Larian's implementation of Advantage and Disadvantage match tabletop, where you roll twice and take the higher or lower.
2.) It makes sense that it is easier to hit someone from high ground, and thus you should get Advantage (capital-A Advantage, instead of just an advantage)
3.) It makes sense that flanking a creature would grant Advantage, and thus Larian's backstab is fine.

My response
1.) No one is arguing that Larian's implementation of these mechanics differs from tabletop rules.

2.) There is a difference between capital-A Advantage and "an advantage." Most of us aren't arguing that it is easier to hit people from high ground, but that getting Advantage is too powerful for something that is so easy to get (walk or jump up a hill). It invalidates a lot of the other methods of getting Advantage (spells, class abilities), since sources of Advantage don't stack. If this bonus was changed into a +1 or +2, then it would be more reasonable (less powerful) but also not invalidate all those other sources of advantage.

3.) I agree that it makes sense that flanking could grant Advantage. However, this is NOT what is happening in BG3. In BG3, you get Advantage for simply moving behind someone, regardless if you have an ally on the opposite side. This doesn't make sense, because in a real fight that enemy would turn to face you.

Why do you say this? D&D 5e already has a system that grants +2 or +5 to enemy AC (the Cover system) and +1-4 to attack rolls (Bless), so using flat bonuses instead of advantage is not inconsistent with the game's rule set.

Just being behind a target period should not grant advantage. I have not noticed that personally my self in testing however. I have noticed range does affect targets regarding disadvantage on rolls by the target being to close hit rates to lower on bows / ranged weapons. Height having a similar affect does make sense the the same regard.

Regarding your comments on height being a little to easy I do agree it is a bit to easy to get height advantage currently in some of the fights in bg3 there are times in DND when this is possible as well depending on your method of thinking and how you use mechanics. In the same regards I do think there should be more zones with more even flat terrain that prevents that abuse a little better. Most campaigns combat tends to have less ability to get advantage from height.

And yes there is cover bonus to AC and some flat bonuses but the height mechanic using that doesnt make logical sense since it isnt included in dnd. I do agree there should be some more implimentations regarding cover however I dont think you should take away a height advantage / disadvantage or flanking as a mechanic from the game and replace it with a passive bonus to hit. I would if there is an issue with cover argue that it should be implimented better maybe looking at a system similar to xcom with partial cover affecting your chance to be hit but then at the same time take into account that height does make some forms of cover inaffective as its not really cover. I would argue that a box doesnt apply cover particularly well ect. Regarding a person standing 5-10 feet higher up than you are it doesnt in the same way. But at the same time I dont think those mechanics will be fully fleshed out till live release. There are larger faulted issues overall than that currently which while they are an issue I also dont expect to be completely fixed untill majority of existing content is updated. Like wizards casting divine spells this completely invalidates some classes. Weapon swapping mid combat this completely invalidates an entire reason for weapon selection oh ill use a 2 hander then ill change weapons make an off hand attack then ill equip a shield so i do not lose my armor class bonus. While advantage and disadvantage probably needs tuning I would be far less concerned about it in early access regards to the affects of cover however if just having your targets back is giving you a significant % increase to your hit rate without having an ally in range of the target I would screen shot it and post it for a fix. I have not really ever checked that specifically myself as ive always implimented flanking tactics as I typically play 2-3 melee characters 2 of which an optionally switch to ranged weapons and still be effective with a bow. So I am generally always flanking the targets which losing advantage on that does not make sense as you would have it in game and its a valid reason for melee to have it as its also part a factor for playing a rogue to be able to flank for access to sneak attack.

From a tactical turn based game point of view... these mechanics are terrible both for long term challenge and replayability (it could be better with tweaked mechanics but obviously, replayability isn't an issue in BG3).

The whole map is designed arround verticality (which is fine) but the current advantage + disadvantage from highground is a god mode.
God mode should never be a basic thing in tactical turn based games, especially when it's so easy to have.

Backstab totally exploit the TB system. It make sense in games that have a cover mechanic because it reward players that use smart strategies and suceed at flanking ennemies.
That's not how it work in BG3 and the cost/reward ratio doesn't exist at all. This is a systematic mechanic - not because it's a good choice among other but because it's the only good choice for melee character.
On top of that, ennemies aren't smart enough to use it against us and they'll never be smart enough to cover their back.

We should never have such bonuses over AI, everything should have consequences and nothing should be systematic in tactical TB games.

Flanking, the optionnal rule of D&D :
- doesn't give any bonus over AI (the AI auto use it)
- have consequences (ennemies could have advantage against you)
- wouldn't be systematic (depend our party composition - number of ennemies - risk/benefit)

On top of that :
- it would increase synergies between characters
- it would create lot more choices/tactical decisions in combats (should my ranger go in melee to delete advantage ennemies have against my fighter ? 3 melee ennemies, I only have 2... Should I buff Gayle and go in melee ? Which ennemies am I going to focus on to delete their advantage ? Should I cast a specific spell to delete ennemies advantage ?)


I guess they choose advantages so players can increase their %to hit easily but that's totally contrary to their will to give us lots of choices in the game.
We don't have much tactical choices to fight in BG3. We only have a few good choices that have terrible consequences on the whole game balance.

They could simply allow us to stack flat bonuses to increase our %to hit. All this already exist in D&D : +"x" arrows, +"x" for weapons, "x" from bless, +"x" from highground >< +"x AC" from cover,... If everything is reasonable - advantages would still be a thing and - "missing" wouldn't be a reported issue anymore.

+1 to flanking

26 Ac is generally the highest flat ac you can get with a very heavily geared character vs +14 to hit so the best change to hit vs the best armor is a hit on a 12 or better so 40% advantage makes that 80% disadvantage 20% a +1 would just be a 5% increase that is discounting exceptional stat bonuses from special items of course or ways to increase your stats over 20 but the standard stat cap is 20. So +5 and your proficency bonus +6 at level 20 and +3 weapons assuming there are +3 weapons anywhere in the game currently the game files go to +2 with rare weapons speaking of which the sword in the stone should be made into a rare weapon rather than just being a +1 long sword. Since its a named item. It would also be nice if you had more choice in what weapons you could craft with the sussar bark, So you could at least customize it to how you want to play rather than being niched into a specific weapon when crafting.

So anyways talking advantage vs disadvantage dnd doesnt exactly make alot of options for bonus to hit instead they give 2 chances at 40% for the best attack to hit the best armor rating. Which unless larian breaks that best possible circumstances thats fairly decient balance. Its still chance vs % to hit. Early access your best possible armor is 19 and the best possible to hit is +1 weapon +4 stat bonus + 3 proficiency bonus so your at a +8 which is 45% chance to hit with disadvantage its 22.5% miss chance vs 90% chance to hit against the best possible armor with advantage. Which is fairly balanced when you consider that alot of the enemies who are in lower numbers do have high health and multi attack with higher hit rates you need to use things to give you an advantage to make sure you are making those hits due to level limitations. The bullet for example on an average fight you need that advantage to kill it. With limited rounds to do so.

I really think you don't understand why many of us in this thread consider backstab and highground as a problem.
It's not about the %to hit at all. It's only about advantages for free (+ disadvantage for highground which means it a godmode)

Rather than being a choice among others, backstab and highground are the only efficient mechanics to have advantages.
Everything else (faery fire, the help action of D&D, barbarian's reckless attack, true strike, invisibility, ...) is a bad choice because it cost something.

Backstab and highground doesn't cost anything and many other choices we could have are useless/suboptimal because of this... Players always have to use the same "tactics" over and over again whatever their classes or their party build.

The lack of other good choices is the problem and this is only because in combats, backstab/highground advantages aren't balanced compared to everything else.

They probably choose easy advantage because "missing is boring". And that's why some of us suggest new bonuses that doesn't exist in D&D in addition (like bless, +1 weapons, the missing +1 arrows,...)

You consider an AC of 19 but this is only what we can have... Not the majority of our ennemies. I just checked in the game.

Minotaurs = 14
Bulette = 17
Gnolls = 14
Goblins = 12 - 14
The Hag = 15

Let's do it with an AC of 15 even if the AC is just a value they can easily increase / decrease.

Melee
+4 modifier
+2 proficiency
+1 weapons
= 65 % without advantages - 88% with advantages

Ranged
+4 modifier
+2 proficiency
+1 weapons
+2 highground
= 75% without advantages - 94% with advantages

Caster
+4 Modifier
+2 proficiency
+2 highground
= 70% without advantages - 91% with advantages

This would give you a reasonable %to hit without advantages and a very good one with advantages.

What would it mean for normal difficulty levels ? That you don't always need advantages in normal difficulty levels even if it's still a very good bonus to grab. Highround would compensate a bit , and there's still bless for harder ennemies.

For very hard bosses, players would have to learn/find the tons of possibilities to have it (hide, faery fire, true strike, reckless attack... and things could be added to increase the synergies between our characters like flanking, RAW help,...)

It's up to Larian to explain what advantages/disadvantages are (the first time you hide, the first time you can flank, the first time you cast a spell,...)

What would it mean for higher difficulty levels with ennemies having an increased AC ? That you HAVE to learn how to have advantages.
Learning how to increase/control your %to hit would be the key before trying a harder level of difficulty.

It means learning how to wisely use your class skills, the spells, the actions (hide, help, flanking,...)

This would make the game far more interresting and deep. Not more difficult. Just more deep, with more choices, more creativity.

Now you just have to learn Larian's homebrewed to win, starting with highground and backstab... and that's not very interresting to do the same thing over and over again neither in a tactical TB game, neither in a D&D games that is supposed to offer us tons of possibilities (and there are many in D&D to have advantage).

PS : of course I tried with a +2 for highground and an AC of 15 but a +1 could also be interresting depending the AC-range of ennemies in this normal game mode. This is just an exemple.

I have edited the above post, and this will become standard practice from now on.

When responding to long posts, there is no need to quote the entire thing just to add a single word or short phrase..

I completely agree with this. It does seem as if many put lots of stock in specifically a +2 bonus though.. maybe it would be possible for Larian to add bonuses as the height advances? Starting with a +1 and going all the way up to +3 or something, so it scales with the meters/feet accordingly? Oh, and obviously going from -1 to maybe -3 on the other end, instead of disadvantage, of course.