Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused Feedback: Spells

The implementation of darkness is extremely poor. It is not supposed to be an environmental cloud effect which can be replaced by other cloud and surfaces. Enemies also seem to be able to shoot into the darkness from high ground without issue. The whole spell needs to be reworked. The ai should be guessing where the player is inside and firing shots at locations rather than being unable to shoot on at all. It should not be coded as a cloud effect as the engine seems to be unable to have 2 clouds on the same zone. An acid flask should not displace a patch of magical darkness. Please fix this.

I’d really like minor illusion to have some more of the utility it can have in a tabletop game.
Another common use besides drawing someone’s attention is to create a 5ft cube (i.e. a crate/box etc.) in front of yourself or an ally in trouble and stand behind it to gain (partial) cover. As far as I know, the most common ruling is that an enemy must attack, miss and then see through the illusion or spend an investigation check and beat the spells DC (as per spell description) to see through the illusion. If not the penalty from half/full cover applies.
(Truesight and such would of course also bypass it)

As for Prestidigitation, now that everyone gets super dirty after one fight, it could clean up a targeted character. Or make someone clean look dirty.
Also, instantaneously lighting or snuffing out a Candle, a torch, or a small campfire from range can be useful as well.

I'm bumping this thread as there weren't stated any changes to Chromatic Orb in Patch 7. Please make it work in a similar way to tabletop - it should just deal 3d8 damage + 1d8 for every upcast level of chosen type to its main target. As an elemental effect, it can also trigger existing surfaces like setting Grease on fire on making water electrified, but that's it.

If you want to give players an option to create surfaces and play with them, you can just do that via common consumables. You already did this with things like Bottle of Grease and Bottle of Water, you can just create similar consumables for other surfaces and make them common enough to be decently accessible to players. This will be much better as players would have total control of if and where they want to create a surface.

EDIT: Another option is to make Chromatic Orb deal full mentioned damage to target if somebody is targeted or create a surface it creates now if nobody is targeted. One impication though - even if you do such a change, it shouldn't make it unavailable to be used with Twinned Spell. If you think we need to pick one between making it available for Twinned Spell or creating the AoE if nobody is targeted, just implement the first suggestion because Chromatic Orb is and should be mainly a single-target spell and surfaces could still be covered with consumables.

Personaly i still dont like this idea ...
Cant see why cant we simply get toggle if we want to create surfaces for the cost of single damage dice ... or not.

Can be an option as well.

Adding some more feedback for the notes on on mage hand, because this is absolutely infuriating, on top of the 'can't multi summon' issues.

All of these things are broken or wrong with mage hand.
- can't interact with levers, containers, items etc.
- shouldn't be able to actively attack. Full stop. No, it should not be shoving characters either. Ten. Pound. Limit. There's a reason - many very good reasons - why mage hand has strict limitations in D&D that DM's homebrew away from only cautiously. Mage hand is currently a really shitty familiar.
- prohibited from jumping so can't reach high places??!?!?!?
- prohibited from being summoned on some completely open surfaces, such as the very center of the Grymforge. It can move onto this location, but can't be summoned there.
- CAN'T PICK UP OBJECTS???????? This is THE most essential function OF mage hand and they've made it not possible????
- I also cannot successfully get it to throw anything (the only legit way mage hand should be able to 'attack') because a) it can't pickup/interact with objects and b) it has no inventory of objects to choose from.

Has there been any feedback from Larian at all about this? Being limited to only one summon completely breaks several core builds and in some cases even entire classes; it's a baffling decision that causes so many problem without improving the balance or gameplay one iota.

I would call the one-summon limit the single worst part of BG3's spell system. It arbitrarily guts an entire style of play, without even the slightest explanation as to why, and it causes constant bugs and issues with things like familiar and mage hand due to them arbitrarily counting as summons. None of the system was designed or balanced with this arbitrary and frustrating limitation in mind - such a poorly-considered choice.

There was no feedbackback about anything from Larian ... ever.
All we can do is guess what they listened to, when they implement it in futher patch. :-/

I really like the vocalised spell animation. The words shouted. such a great idea! really really good!

the only 'negative' thing i could say is I miss identify as spell or ritual.. because i miss the little surprises.

Dissonant Whispers needs to specifically force the enemy to use its reaction to move away from you (possibly drawing Attacks of Opportunity from you and your allies). It's not a frighten effect and is thus supposed to work even against enemies who can't be frightened.

I've not updated this thread with the new spells for this patch yet, but if I can find the time to go through things and see if they've fixed or changed any of the existing issues when I do so, I'll try.

Darkness is still wonky and awful as of Patch 8, but I have noticed that a warlock with the Devil's Sight invocation is immune to the blinding effect (creatures with natural superior darkvision aren't, though, for whatever reason).

The biggest problem that still persists with every surface-spawning spell (Grease, Spike Growth, Entangle and so on) is that the surface they create gets overriden with other things, like blood or water. There should be a priority order for surfaces overriding one another (anything that needs to be concentrated on shouldn't just disappear from being peed on, always staying on top of the other ones), and it should be limited to elemental interactions only (fire burning entangle vines/webs/grease, for instance).

Im not sure they are supposed to be. O_o

Another long-running issue that hasn't been addressed as of yet (and no doubt mentioned here several times already) is how multi-targeting is implemented for Bless, Bane, and upcast versions of spells that allow additional targets with higher level spell slots (e.g., Command (Halt)). It's unacceptable, frankly. Having almost no control over who gets the effect with something that consumes a resource and is a valuable tactical tool should absolutely not be that freaking awkward to use.

I definitely feel like spells that require saving throws need a buff, as they were indirectly nerfed by the way that HP was buffed and AC was nerfed on enemies.

Spell incantations are still being shouted VERY loudly. While this is fitting for an offensive spell, shouting like you want to rip someone to shreds just to create a Light or cast Guidance in a dungeon is not. There are many situations where discretion would be much more sensible than shouting at the top of your lungs. When Shadowheart shouts Guidance just to disarm a trap, it feels like enemies should rush in to see what the ruckus is about.

A more dynamic approach where some spells could be almost whispered would be much better from a narrative and stylistic point of view. It would also be a great way to give spells different kind of character. E.g. Illusions could be more whispery echoy mysterious, Enchantments could be soft and alluring, Abjurations could be steadfast monotonous speech, Conjuration could be calls that echo, Necromancy could have some spirits whispering in the background and Evocation could be the brash shouting we now have for basically everything.

And whispering really loudly can be great for a dramatic effect. ,-)

Unfortunately, when I spoke with them about this in particular, it was reported to me as being deliberately intended that way (i.e., that the game randomly selects a number of appropriate targets within the radius, from all appropriate targets available within the radius), and that this is working as intended. I attempted to provide the feedback that this was simply not acceptable mechanically, but so far nothing has come of it.

There is, supposedly, a large spell and casting system rework in the works - no ETA - but I'm hoping that we'll see it launched at the same time as their long awaited reaction rework. We have no further concrete news as of yet.

I've been on this crusade for a while.

It also affects things like Metamagic: Hold Person. The first time I tried to twin, I failed on the enemy and the second one (I can't control the target) succeeded on an ALLIED character.

Like, what the fuck? Not to mention your characters have to be grouped to get the bless and in a certain formation that you don't waste it.

It's not a fun optimal experience at all.

Spell AoE radius for Moonbeam, Shatter, etc. are STILL off the tooltip outline and don't hit the highlighted enemies near the edges shown.

It's so disappointing to think you're going to hit 5 enemies and you only hit 3.

Or to lay a Moonbeam that is supposed to hit multiple and it hits no one. Also, isn't Moonbeam not supposed to deal damage initially when it's placed but starting on the opponents turn?

You can get 4d10 of free damage if the enemy goes directly after you and there's nothing they can do about it.

The Witch Bolt animation looks awful, sorry. It looks like a glitch and not textured properly.

The Silence spell looks blatantly unfinished and lazy.

And using Entangle or Web just feels so bad. A fire arrow removes it and you've wasted a spell slot.