Yup. The same tactic over and over again. The more I played, the more I realized how poorly combat was implemented in this game. I guess for DOS fans, it’s fun but for someone who never played them like me, it kinda blows.
Even as someone who played both DOS games front to back, the current system sucks. They basically took the absolute worst parts of the overall DOS design philosophy and slapped it into BG3. Hell, a lot of the DOS-type mechanics that people often cite aren't even the same in BG3 as in DOS. If anything, a lot of them are actually even WORSE implementations than they were before.
- High Ground/Low Ground: High ground in DOS2 offered you a damage boost, while low ground resulted in a damage penalty. They also altered your attack range. DOS2 actually capped the low ground damage penalty at -5% damage, while the high ground bonus starts at +10% damage and increases by +5% for every point you invest into the Huntsman skill. The penalty being capped at a measly -5% means there is still an emphasis to getting to high ground, but characters on low ground could still retaliate. The exact modifier is completely unique to the mechanic. Meanwhile, in BG3, being higher or lower actually does not appear to modify your attack range by any significant margin unless you're at the very bottom of a cliff trying to shoot up or something, high ground/low ground affects your accuracy instead, the exact modifier is shared with several spells that grant the same bonus/penalty with a far greater resource cost, and the penalty is as massive as the bonus.
- Field Effects: Field effects at their core are largely unchanged from DOS2 to BG3. The major difference is how they interact with the rest of the mechanics. In DOS2, you potentially had access to many mobility skills that could take you across the whole map, and you could do the same to enemies with Teleport/Nether Swap too. Magic armor would also block many of their effects until depleted. In BG3, there is no such magic armor defense, you have a bonus action jump to get you out of them (and one could also argue that maybe bonus action jump is an overcorrection to field effects existing), and field effect damage forces you to roll a concentration check.
It's why I am worried about the community reaction to Paladin if field effects are to remain as is once they are released - people talk about the smites, but few have considered that almost all of their spells require concentration. It would
really tragic for your Paladin to lose that Branding Smite just because you walked into a fire field on your way to attack an enemy standing within. And you can't just stand outside of the danger zone and wait for the enemy to walk out to pre-emptively smack them during their turn like you can in Solasta, because ready actions aren't a thing in BG3. A lot of the really good Cleric spells later on like Spirit Guardians requires concentration too.
Quite frankly, I have a small list of things that would have to change in order to bring a lot of the actual tactical decision making into the game.
1) Turn high ground advantage/low ground disadvantage into +2/-2 modifiers. Maybe even get rid of the -2 modifier entirely.
2) Turn backstab advantage into a flanking system instead, and reduce the modifier from advantage to +2.
3) Allow saving throws to mitigate damaging field effects and items such as barrels. Field effect damage should additionally not trigger concentration checks.
4) Add ready actions and proper reactions to the game. One can talk about how cumbersome reactions may or may not be, but ready actions don't have that problem at all, and I don't see a valid reason why ready actions at the very minimum should be absent, unless the engine really is as non-flexible for programming anything new outside of environmental stuff as people are starting to believe.
On top of that we have "powers" our ennemy never use so we're very more powerfull than them ... Except when Larian add them frustrating powers to create a fake feeling of difficulty.... Hello minotaurs...
The latter is very prevalent in DOS2 as well. It's why I hesitate to call DOS2 a tactical masterpiece today, even if I was highly impressed in my earlier playthroughs for its new ideas. But late game DOS2 more or less devolved into frontloaded turn 1-2 plays, just like BG3, and late game DOS2 was a complete balancing mess with some of the most insane rocket tag I had ever seen in a turn-based game. I fear BG3 is already headed towards that same path in other ways, even more because BG3's problems are already quite obvious in this EA phase, while from all accounts DOS2's balancing problems with the armor system weren't as obvious to anyone but the very far-sighted.
Most people cite the hardest boss fights in DOS2 as one of the two below.
1) Alice Aliceson, an undead flaming scarecrow whose major gimmick is nuking your whole party with a fireball with so many damage modifiers behind it that it'll one shot most entire parties unless you specifically prepare for it. She also has a high Retribution stat, and in Tactician difficulty, it's high enough to reflect 50% of damage you inflict back at you with only very specific ways to avoid that. One of the most common ways to deal with the fight is for a player to get someone with the ability to cast Teleport on high ground, and warp her over to the nearby merchant Jaehan, who happens to be a playable character from DOS1 (and as such is at max level), who will immediately destroy the boss for you.
The actual legit way to approach the fight is to cast Bless on her to remove her +50% fire damage Pain Aura and to turn all of the fire she's standing in into Holy Fire, providing your party +20% fire resistance and healing all non-undead/damaging all undead within. And then target her weak physical armor and then stunlock her into oblivion with physical status effects, while being mindful of that retribution reflect damage. Using healing abilities on her actually bypasses her damage reflect too, which is particularly effective with Soul Mate allowing you to link a party member and her together so that any healing said party member receives will damage her, but you're not going to know that without having gone through the fight several times beforehand.
Either way, you are not beating her without clairvoyance, there is absolutely no one in existence who would have been able to defeat her first try on normal difficulty or higher, simply due to her super frontloaded design. At least not without having the foresight to keep your entire party split up at all times.
2) Aetera, who typically opens her fight by teleporting away (which may or may not cost 1 AP, her teleport is unique), casting Blizzard on your party (which requires 3 AP and 3 source points), potentially casting Rain or another ice spell to freeze them if they lost all of their magic armor (1-3 AP depending on the spell used), and then drain a source point from a party member who lost their magic armor (which may or may not cost 1 AP). She'll cast Chain Lightning (3 AP and 1 source point) during turn 2, or Blizzard if she cast Chain Lightning during turn 1. Either way, that super frontloaded volley has her using abilities with far more AP cost during turn 1 than players can start out with (4, or 6 if Lone Wolf is in effect). Oh, and did I mention there are four dangerous wolf spirits in the fight too?
This is another fight that you're not beating without clairvoyance, unless you're extremely lucky - I did beat her first try, but only because I luckily had Fane's Time Warp cast on my archer before she froze my entire party during turn 2 (which still allowed my archer to take a turn despite being frozen), and archers were busted enough that he was able to do enough damage to one-round her.
DOS2 basically trains you to exploit cheese at every opportunity, perhaps to a level where I struggle to call it cheese when it's so clearly intended. BG3's haphazard implementation of the mechanics in comparison instead trains you to avoid engaging with the base DnD mechanics as much as possible, in ways I shouldn't have to explain at this point, and it only happens to look like cheese because the bonuses are insane with very little drawback.
