I feel like the game is difficult for the wrong reasons. The systems are designed in a way that I feel that combat is entirely balanced around getting to high ground/front-loaded surprise round and first round alpha strikes to do as much as you can before the enemy party gets to retaliate.
That's fair, but there are multiple reasons being aggressive makes sense and results in victory. if you are always facing the enemy instead of running away you are denying them advantage. If you play a defensive game you are trading some form of healing or mitigation for damage that could even out the action economy. Additionally you have to trust that your teammates will back your play the same way you would back theirs (in terms of multiplayer) and they will respond with the same level of aggression.
Things like this are why you still get complaints about the RNG despite Larian doing everything in their power to mitigate it through their own systems. It has an extreme psychological effect in that anything without advantage or anything that doesn't benefit from advantage rolls (spells targeting saving throws) suddenly feels absolutely awful to use. Incidentally, damaging spells that do target saving throws tend to be useful in that later variants inflict half damage if an enemy saves against them, rather than no damage at all. Problem is, there are very few such spells in EA right now, and most classes don't start seeing them until level 5+ anyway - which we probably won't see in EA period. That and many classes getting access to extra attack at level 5 is already going to result in a wildly different balancing situation.
People can complain about RNG but what game - based on dice rolls - were they expecting? The smart play is to focus on spells and abilities that target an opponents weak saving rolls. Larian gives us a HUGE advantage by letting us examine the monsters before combat and work out where they have weaknesses, which is why the best spell to use against the Bullet is "Command:Halt" - since its wisdom is 10 and it doesn't have wisdom saving proficiency. Its also weak against Dissonant Whispers.
(When the Bard class is released, people will get to play around with one such spell that does half damage upon a successful save, one exclusive to Bards called Dissonant Whispers. It's one of the Bard's few offensive spells at low levels, and it targets enemy wisdom saves. Full damage + enemy is immediately forced to move as far away from you as they can if they fail (will probably get turned into a frightened effect in BG3), half damage if they succeed.)
Dissonant Whispers is in game. GOO Warlocks get it on the bonus spell list. It works just like you mentioned.
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Dissonant+Whispers Incidentally, I just noticed you joined the forums about a month after I made a massive thread outlining how all of these systems negatively impact the overall experience in the long term. It's rather telling that the thread existed for a whole week, and no one even came into the thread to directly argue against any of the points being made at any point in that time period. I've just become even more pessimistic since due to the radio silence.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=96428&Number=757307#Post757307I have been on the forums for years but I forgot my old password. Too many guesses so its probably locked. So I just made a new account.
I read your post - and here is the thing, its all great points and if Larian decided to be more strict about where Advantage was applied I would be 100% behind that. However they also need to fix concentration so we can properly use spells that provide advantage on the battlefield and not lose the slot because somebody tossed a alchemist fire at your feet and you took 2 burn damage, or add the Feat that allows you to ignore the first ten points of damage against having to make a concentration check and giving you advantage on those checks.
