Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Looks like Larian cheese is here to stay

Larian's rationale is also not using their cheese if you don't like it. However, Larian seems to consider their cheese as the core mechanic D&D is fitted around instead of the other way around. Simply not using cheese, still is knowingly engaging in sub-optimal gameplay...in a game where everything is geared towards optimization. It is a conscious self-nerf in a game balanced around the cheese.

The cheese is circular; it screws over D&D balance and becomes an excuse to further neglect the issue. It sacrifices balance for literally a barrel of laughs. From completely broken, virtually non-existent resting mechanics (D&D is wholly balanced around it) - which benefits certain classes/subclasses immensely. To overpowered bonuses for height and flanking, where the flanking mechanic is so rudimentary it cheapens the tactical combat it is supposed to incentivize. Further exacerbated by the AI failing to exploit it like the player easily can. In turn, all this makes certain character creation selections hugely superior to others, which in reality diminishes (viable) choice.

Not many mentions pickpocketing as part of the cheese, but it very much is. In DOS2 and BG3, once you know the mechanic, it becomes a legalized exploit that is risk-free, quick and the by far best source of near infinite wealth and gear. It alone destroys any semblance of risk vs reward mechanic in the game. Be an amoral kleptomaniac, or be punished for it! It's downright anti-roleplaying, but who cares when some have fun abusing the system and others are free to kind of ignore it - right? Also ignore there's no law & order system which manages to be a direct downgrade from the two decade old predecessor.

Consider "weapon dipping". Larian's cheesy core mechanic manages to become a chore mechanic as it's both clunky and micromanagement-intensive. It also comes with its own balance issues and is a significant early-game damage bonus for particularly dual-wielders - "balanced" around the player's "boredom threshold". On top of that it manages to be immersion breaking in that it can be a normal candle that is everburning and can set even steel weapons ablaze. A fire that somehow does not burn the wielder. It lacks any internal logic. It is also wholly unnecessary, as most of the cheese really is. D&D has tons of ways to set "weapons on fire" using cantrips, spells or magical or alchemical resources. The D&D implementations has none of the many issues of Larian's cheese.

Much of the same criticism can be directed towards the "shove" or "throw enemy"-mechanics. Alongside "tadpole jump" these are some of the numerous strong boosts to Strength-based characters (again more balance issues). It is situationally an instant win mechanic, simplistic in a way that does not consider relative body mass, or indeed multiple legs. A tiny invisible halfling could push the huge oblivious/stupid phase spider matriarch queen with 100% success. Again, D&D has cantrips, spells and magical items that could do the trick (i.e. Repelling Blast, Thunderwave, Ring of the Ram, homebrew wild shaped Bull with knockback charge) without messing with balance or immersion. Hell, I wouldn't complain as much if Larian bothered to even attempt giving their cheese legitimacy by providing some "internal logic". I.e. by making it a "tadpole" kinetic, more balanced power where willpower+dexterity could give a ranged option to willpower+strength melee.

The barrelmancy is fine, just scale it back and give it "internal logic". What is it, and why are there so many barrels of "wildfire"? Why aren't the enemies reacting to explosives in their midst? Why aren't the enemies using it to their advantage? I would like to see the BG1s "kobold commandos" make a comeback with BG3 goblins using these things against the player. This would be a direct homage to the classic and a type of "cheese" people would appreciate.

Over-emphasis on homebrew/cheesy magical items. When everything is "special", nothing is special. Scale back and give D&D players more of the classic items. Better balance please.

Once you move beyond the "if you don't like it, don't use it"-mindset and actually bother to analyze the issues, you realize this is about much more than a handful of easily ignored implementations. BG3 is supposed to live up to the legendary title, but Larian is dropping the ball gameplay-wise. Larian could give us their fun gameplay elements without sacrificing balance and immersion, just by respecting D&D a little more. Larian (writers AND programmers) and Wizards of the Coast (D&D experts) could benefit immensely from a sit down focusing on making the gameplay congruent with the 5e setting and BG3 story.

I started to compare BG3's bestiary with D&D Monster manual. Early observations : combats are way too challenging for our party.

Why ? Probably because the game assume you'll use those cheese.

While many players complained about missing, it seems Larian has often increased créatures AC.
This mean you'll miss more often than you should... That's probably also why they give us easy advantages (what's the cause, what's the consequences ?), breaking at the same time a lot of spells, features, tactics,...

They also increased dexterity, consequences for ST.

Cheeses have many conséquences whatever you use them or not.

On another recent feedback thread someone is even saying that playing a caster makes no sense.
I disagree because there are many pro but I understand him... With dipping it's like 2 additionnal arms wielding fire daggers for melee characters.

This is just an exemple but every melee characters are more powerfull than they should. Dual wielder are even more. How could the game be balanced for every players with such huge gap ? (Dipping can also burn the targets).

On the other hand is that fair to ask players not to use fun/usefull basic mechanics because they're too powerfull ?

It's all about balancing D&D and BG3's additions and nothing else. This would lead to a better game for everyone especially if they created mechanics that can easily be tweaked by options.

Flat bonus for highground/backstab is easy to tweak (0/+1/+2/+5), advantage can only be a ON/OFF button.

With the actual combat setting higher level of difficulty will just suck and only increase player's frustration (more miss, more death). BG3's most powerfull mechanics are cheap and there are close to nothing to learn about this game except a few cheeses.

Yeah there are so many damn examples of the cheese breaking balance and immersion that it's kind of ... depressing.

So ... to put it simply ...
IF monsters would have proper HP, and AC, and spells, and spellslots, and equipment, etc.
You would not mind that game would provide you backstab/high ground, or abylity to push someone off the cliff, or surround him with his own barrels of Blackpowder, etc. ?

Bcs this sounds like quite easy thing to manage. O_o

Not at all what I said.
Combats are balanced arround those cheese. "You may not use them" doesn't work for all the basics cheeses. To put it simply that's what I said

Im not quite sure how to tell it differently, but i try bcs you clearly dont understand me.
Mainly bcs i was not talking about what you said ... but i was giving you a question. -_-

Lets try it this way:
You say that *NOW* combat is balanced arround cheese.
And that is problem.

Correct?

Therefore i ask:
What *IF* combat would *NOT* be balanced arround cheese?

Lets use your example:
*NOW* Higher AC
using cheese = game as it should be ... not using cheese = game harder than it should be
-> Therefore combat bad.

Correct?

*IF* Regular AC (read as: Same as in monster manual for DnD)
using cheese = game easier then it should be ... not using cheese = game as it should be
-> Therefore combat good.

Correct?

So i try to repeat myself:
*IF* monsters would have proper HP, AC, spells, spellslots, equipment, consumables etc.
(Read as: If everything about monsters would be coppied from monster manual, nothing added by Larian)
Would you still mind cheese being there?
And if so, why?

I am not Maximuuus, but I would mind.

Advantage/disadvantage from high/low ground is still very impactful and AI takes advantage of it all the time. Enemies will still advantage over you while you have disadvantage, no matter if their stats are original or not. Also AI occasionally will get advantage from backstab too.

Some of the joy in games comes from learning the boundaries of what you can do within the rules and then pushing on those boundaries. I think that Larian wants to give players that "I'm clever - I came up with a workaround that just skirts the rules" feeling, but the problem is that they give it away for free.

Blowing up barrels, for example, isn't clever - it takes work to get through the game without having barrels blow up. And once you learn that trick, it's easy to use it again in any fight. Gaining Advantage by getting to high ground isn't clever - it's almost trivial and creates a huge swing in battles; and you can use it in every fight. And even if you don't intend to use it - even if you try not to use it - it's still baked into the system and it will be used, both by you and against you.

The challenge of coming up with clever tactics isn't there - it's too easy because they are given to us for free. We need to be pushing against the rules to earn our victories. Saying "just don't use the cheesy stuff" leaves us pushing on a rotten wall that collapses under our weight. It's not gratifying.

Agreed. What Larian perceives they are doing by creating this environment in the game is not actual reality.

OFF-TOPIC (apologies mods): I don't mean to be offensive, but you mentioned "Im not quite sure how to tell it differently, but i try bcs you clearly dont understand me." and so I wanted to maybe help you understand why I at least have difficulty understanding you.

You have a very unique posting style, with lots of elipses (...), lots of single ideas separated by spaces instead of in a single paragraph, abbreviations for words that aren't normally abbreviated in English ("Because is bcs"), and to be honest, you often end your posts with a slight jab at the poster you're responding to while adding in smiley face emotes to make it seem like you're being friendly.

All that adds up to posts that can be difficult to follow, at least for me.

AC is just another exemple to show how bad the game is balanced and how strange Larian is thinking about "the missing issue" they created.

Of course I would mind of cheeses even if the AC/abilities and any other statistics were "true" to the MM.
Those cheese reduce our creativity A LOT and the tactical value of this tactical TB game.

There's 0 valuable tactics in BG3 except cheesing - from highground/backstab, to dipping, to the WTF consummables.
And I'm not talking about "choices for fun" that have 0 consequences on the game's balance like barrels... I'm talking about all those basic mechanics that are way too OP compared to the rules Larian's trying to use.

Don't use any cheese and the game is so hard. Use all of them and it's so easy. How couldn't you consider this as a problem ?
The best tactics in BG3 are cheap, easy and repetitive. There's close to nothing to learn about the game except jumping, dipping, going higher and shoving.

Those chesses create issues to the class balance, to the game's difficulty, to the variety of meaningfull choices a D&D game should offer us.
D&D is supposed to be about "freedom". BG3 is all about using the same tricks with every class at every encounters.

Oh yea of course you CAN use sleep, fog cloud, blindness, fairy fire, try to hide during combats and so on... But it's always a sub-optimal tactic.
Thinking inside Larian's box is the best and the more valuable tactic. Not what I want in a D&D game where it's supposed to be "my choices".

I would get more satisfaction from the simple action of engaging enemies with a Fighter to hold them in place than the high ground backstab help jump around nonsense. But even that basic tactic isn't available since Larian gave every enemy some form of teleport. Minotaurs - teleport, Hook Horrors - teleport, Bulette - teleport, Phase Spiders - teleport, Githyanki - teleport, Mud Mephits - teleport, Hag - teleport... bla bla bla everything teleports to pounce on your squishy party members.

And all the battlefields are wide open spaces where you are just dashing for high ground. Even underground every fight is about high ground.

The OP homebrew mechanics override all interesting class ability combos like Hold Person and Inflict Wounds. Or even just shoving something prone so your team mates can use some powerful attacks with advantage would be fun, but you can't even shove prone. Just get to high ground and you'll win.

I'm surprised the combat is so terrible I don't feel like playing this otherwise amazing game.

I for one wish combat was a little more challenging. I took out the ENTIRE Zentarim hideoout (with Asterion) in a single turn by 1) showing a person off a cliff and 2) shooting a barrel.

It was epic --- and also very boring. Sort of like a summer blockbuster movie with lots of explosions. No depth, big boom.

I have no idea about DnD rules and what would be better/worse in those terms of getting it closer to 5e. The upside of some of these mechanics (like shove and backstab and throw) is that newbs can have a more accessible experience because they don't have to know every little nuance of party building and strategy in Dnd to survive --- ie, they can make it work with whoever ended up in the engagement and can go for a party of folks they actually like story-wise. Hell, I can even say that this game has made me want to play *actual* tabletop DnD, which I have not done for many, many, MANY years. So being accessible is great.

On the downside --- being able to take out a whole hideout in a single move? I don't know...I gotta call that cheese. The stinky kind.

Would be great to have "newbie version" and "advanced version" settings in game, with the advanced being more challenging and true to 5e (ie, no barrels, less surfaces, disengage separate from jump, and all the others raised by DnD old-schooolers).

Maybe in the next game?

Everything is possible and that's why some of us here are trying to make suggestion that could suit all kind of players from newcomers to D&D or any other tactical TB game fans.

There are not a lot of problem but there are many solutions. Of course the balance between D&D and Larian's additions/changes have to be reworked... but that's for the sake of all of us whatever they'll change or not.

Ok, thanks for answers.
You were all much helpfull.

@Maximuuus
I admire your efforts to make this game better.
However I am not sure the reason why things are not moving, comes from Larian's view on what is balanced.
I am convinced that the combat AI desperately needs those "larianisms" to show some activity. From there it's not that much about providing the player with some "cheese", it's more about giving the AI some elements to demonstrate some abilities and to show a pseudo intelligence. That is not tactically impressive but its adaptative nature allows players to play and replay several fights with a different experience (potentially boring) each time.
In the whole EA part of the game, I am not aware of any fight where the AI would perform well on a flat ground with no interactive object, just relying on the DnD features of the npcs. If they don't do it at low levels, I am afraid they won't do it at higher levels when the number of combinations explode.

I think the above comment says it all. The AI is completely built around the arcade “cheese” mechanics. Start a battle from the top of the tower in the goblin camp and sit back and watch as several goblins just stand around and talk trash while you fill them with arrows round after round. I am pretty sure that every battle needs to be planned in advance for it to not completely break the AI. If you do something truly unexpected, such as retreat to the other side of a bridge instead of rushing head long into the throng or seizing the high ground, the AI doesn’t seem to know how to respond. I don’t think there is any fixing this I am afraid.

In many ways this game is Baldurs Gate: Monty Python. It seems to me that Larian has adopted the concept that fantasy games are not meant to be taken seriously. The original Infinity Engine games often had adolescent humor in the dialogues, think of the Melium the Masterful encounter or two psycho girls on the ship in the city, but the combat was always deadly serious. Cheese tactics were possible, i.e. wand of cloud kill and project image, but they were certainly not core to the experience. Larian seems to have taken the opposite approach. Conversations are all deadly serious with little humor, but the battles are meant to look like a Michael Bey film.

I have spent the last few weeks playing Pathfinder Kingmaker and I am struck by how it is superior in so many ways (although I think the devs were kind of a prick at times). For instance, there is no need to click 50 times in a room to loot things. This is so nice from a quality of life perspective. There is no eating of pigs heads for healing. Rest is regulated by supplies. There is an actual sense of urgency. Last but not least it is actually fun to use character abilities. I have enjoyed playing BG3, but I think they are going to lose people by about mid game if the mechanics and immersion aren’t improved. Once people realize that there are abilities (such as throw) that produce instant victory, they won’t be able to stop themselves from using it. It would be like giving a kid a test with the answer sheet and telling them not to use the answer sheet until it is time to grade it. Once you know the optimum way of getting from one point to the other, it is almost impossible to not take advantage of it.

I would second the above.

I'm all for moments of levity to lighten the sombre undertaking of what should be a grand fantasy adventure but Larian remind me of someone who is constantly trying too hard to be funny; after a while it can become rather exhausting.

A lot of folks have advocated for this.

Honestly I believe a healthy middle ground can be achieved. For example characters shouldn't be able to carry so many barrels, but oil flasks are native to D&D. If the fire arrow misses, the fire surface should too, etc.

I think shove would remain in the middle ground. But if that's too much work, I'm okay with pure D&D and Larian's D&D light mode.

These are all great examples of major balancing problems im BG3. It is frustrating to hear so many apparently ignorant people say things like "play another game then." The point of this forum is to discuss the game, and Larian has explicitly asked us to criticize the game so they can make a better one.

There are major issues with the way the game mechanics are balanced. Not just between classes, but the way D&D has been refined and balanced over five decades. This is not some silly generic RPG -- this is an officially licensed campaign. So, if you give players unlimited shove to CC every fight with no skills or spells, easy advantage on all attacks, consequence-free stealing of all items and gold, effortless cheesing of AI through barrels, and unlimited replenishment of spell slots and abilities...then it's not D&D anymore. The game mechanics are what define the game. Removing all the game mechanics makes it not the game.