Encounters are all designed to be challenging and if you don't use Larian's cheese (and don't know much about D&D), the game can be a pain from the beginning to the end.
It adheres to D&D rules at the expense of playability. Those rules might be great in a pen and paper setting, they're lousy for a video game. Larian need to strike a balance between D&D rules and playability for a casual, non-D&D audience. Those of us who are used to RPGs were battles are fun and flowing. Let me give you an example. A fight against the Drow boss. My party has bless, Gale has full, 100% health. The boss hits him with a spell doing 100% damage and putting him out of the fight. It's not like I can get him up because the AI targets the character with the least HP and puts them back down before they can take a health potion or be healed. How will that be fun to your average gamer?
Another example is sleep spells put Gale to sleep 100% of the time. It never misses. It does with other characters but never fails to put him to sleep. What use is a Wizard who can be put out of the fight in a single hit? It's about my party having bless and hitting a Goblin for 5 damage, then the same Goblin hitting me for 15. With only 28 health that's more than 50% damage in a single hit, and that's the beginning of the round. How is that in any way fun for your average gamer who's never played D&D?
TT players will correct me if I'm wrong but according to my little knowledge of 5e (and every encounter builder I tried / video I watched) :
- You're not fighting against 15 goblins at the same time in the TT at level 3.
- You'll never fight 2 minotaurs at level 4 and those minotaurs don't have 3 attacks/round and/or cannot jump to reach your Gale 50m away.
- You never fight against Flind + gnolls at level 4.
- You never fight a spectator + 5 drow at level 4.
- You'll never fight 4 githyanki warriors at level 4.
- You',ll never fight 3 ogres at level 3 or 4.
- 4 harpies with level 3 characters is a deadly encounter, especially with this verticality and the advantage/disadvantage from highground.
- Recaps, yuan-ti,...
- Ennemies won't focus your Gale and you're not going to enter a loop dead/help/dead/help/dead/...
- Sleep is based on dice to determine the number of HP that's gonna sleep... Meaning your gale won't alwayd fall asleep / more than 1 creature could fall asleep...
Nothing here adhere to D&D and those encounters in the TT would be absolutely deadly.
Of course Larian has tried to "rebalance" those creatures but they did a poor job and
combats are not representative at all of D&D.
Exemple : they reduced the harpy's HP so they increased their AC and their dexterity = you have to hit less often but... you miss more often... Great ! Did they consider we would enjoy missing more ?
Every encounters can be deadly if you're unlucky enough in the TT but in BG3 combats are just too hard for players that don't use all
OP Larianism and too easy for players that regularly use them.
These OP mechanics unbalance everything and create a lot of frustration and/or repetitiveness in combats.
These problems comes from Larian's design decisions / monsters rebalance or choices. Not from the source material.
D&D combats in video games :
- are tactical
- makes you feel powerfull
- can be challenging
- aren't frustrating if you know a bit about the rules (modifiers, increase your %to hit,...which require tutorials)
- can be balance
- are fun
BG3 combats are often frustrating, are too easy and/or too hard depending if you're using "Larian's creativity" or if you're thinking "inside Larian's box", are repetitive because they always require to use the same tactics and they aren't balanced or tactical at all.
This is NOT because of D&D. Keep that in mind and if you don't believe me... try Solasta (and close your eyes during cutscenes^^).
Combats in this game probably aren't perfect for a wider audience but it's far better than what we have in BG3... and this is because of D&D.
