Not the person you responded to
This feels very subjective in regards to a distinction. Can you provide me with some examples of BG3 Home Brew that makes all the characters feel the same? I think disengage BA is the only one I can think of. What other examples of Homebrew do you mean?
- All characters can cast any spell a scroll, making every character a wizard
This is just something that has not been implemented. No class tags have been assigned to spells. As it is Wizards can learn every spell regardless of class.
- All characters benefit from high ground/backstab (whereas in other games e.g., DOSII only certain classes benefitted from high ground; and backstab is typically a rogue thing)
I mean I guess you mean advantage because backstab is still a rogue only ability. No one gets an extra 1d6 from an attack from advantage. Advantage is not something that is a specific class ability but reflects certain conditions.
- Many enemies have a free disengage and tend to target low-AC characters, which removes the role of frontline tanky characters. This turns every party member into more of a frontline warrior
Goblins have this as part of their actual ability set in the Monster manual. This is correct. I don't recall anyone else having it. Tanks are not really a thing anymore. This is part of 5e which opened up class versatility.
- The "Help" action restores HP to downed allies; this makes every character a mini-cleric. Furthermore, the abundance of healing food removes the need for a cleric
Clerics are not pigeonholed as healers anymore, this is part of 5e class versatility. Furthermore Clerics bring someone back up as a bonus action from range. So I don't think this really holds water. There is stuff in PHB that would technically allow this under certain conditions (Nat 20 using a healing kit).
- Everyone can shove as bonus action, whereas in 5e this is limited to a shield-wielder with a dedicated feat.
Ok, fair enough. I think it makes the game funny as hell but if you don't that's your opinion.
- And ofc disengage makes every character more of a rogue/monk
Yeah I mentioned this.
What balancing techniques do you feel would fix the overpowered Solasta characters?
Many Solasta characters would be made less OP if feats were tweaked to be less powerful. But this would still allow each character to retain a sense of personality based on their class-feat combo.
As you mentioned, the Concentration feat should just provide advantage. The Follow-up should just provide a single BA attack (In my latest playthrough, that's what the feat
said it did).
For the mage class, maybe the ability should instead allow you to reroll 1's (you must use the new result) on evocation spells' damage dice?
Yes but they are not going to do this. Being fair to both games the problem in my eyes is not the homebrew stuff, its creating a challenge that reflects the increased power level. I think - so far - BG3 does a better job of encounter building to balance against the homebrew. Solasta has a long way to go to both 1) increase the quality of the AI and 2) give the other side appropriate tools to provide a solid fight.
I honetsly think that Solasta doesn't have the energy and resources to spend on encounter balancing where I think Larian
obsesses over it.
In a fight in BG3 with Goblins I feel like I am fighting Goblins. They are shifty little shits that fight dirty. I don't always know what they will do. Which is great. They have surprised me with some nasty behavior. The same goes for bugbears, red caps, humans, clerics, and wizards. I have observed separate AI scripts for different enemies, which is awesome!
In Solasta I know what most enemies are going to do 90% of the time. Some variations for spellcasters and flying enemies but even then they follow a pretty predictable pattern.
And listen, I went into Solasta expecting a grand challenge - I put the time and energy into learning the rules and being super meticulous about my loadout, character build, equipment, crafting and spell prep and I ended up never running into an encounter where it was ever really tested. So for me that was a letdown. Just one encounter where I barely scraped by would have been nice.
