Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How does BG3 compare to BG2?

While there were tons of in-game-mechanic exploits for BG2 that required a decent understanding of game knowledge - i.e. Thiefs using Mislead to backstab on every hit, Mages using Project Image Combos to caste an infinite amount of spells, there were some legit, in your face game mechanic exploits too in BG1/BG2.

I will say in the original games the exploit felt more like bugs than "deliberately design to be exploited" like many of Larian's. But to Alice's point, it was pretty abusable. Having replayed BG2 far more recently, most of my examples will be based on that game. Some of the big ones that stand out in my mind:


The Original Dialogue Bug
BG2 actually has a very similar "kill them while in dialogue bug" as BG3. Essentially, for any non-aggressive enemies, or ones you can catch fast enough prior to them turning hostile, you can pause, click on them to engage in dialogue, and then switch to attacking them. The NPC will stay neutral and wait for the dialogue to initiate while your entire party hammers at them till death. Sometimes this has the potential to wear off, but you can refresh stall duration by repeating the pause, click to talk and switch to attack again. This works in a good bunch of fights, with the most notable victims being the Dragons in SoA


The Original Barrels (Thief Traps)
While the original games didn't have explosive barrels, they did have thieves trap (and spell traps, though those are less terrible) - which also lets you bypass/cheese any fight, arguably with less effort (since you at least need to find and accumulate barrels. Traps just come back with rest, which is unlimited). While it is a least a class mechanic, it's not that much better since thieves are basically a requirement in BG2. Everything is vulnerable to traps. For a game where dice determines everything, traps always hits, and always damages (no saves, AC doesn't matter).

NPCs have no counters to these, just like Barrels in BG3 - for any non-immediately hostile enemies, you can literally set these traps right beside them while they'd just stand and watch as you plan their demise. In the cases you can't (i.e. dialogue auto-initiates, then fight), you can still set them up pretty easily short distant away and draw them in. Traps also don't go away - you can rest until you've set the max number of traps.

Points to BG2 for limiting the max number of traps to 7 on a map (although that basically kills anything), but deductions for doubling down on this in TOB by introducing the Spike Traps (basically traps on roids). At least in DOS2, non-Death Fog barrels become much less useful in the late game due to numbers bloat. In TOB you can one shot almost any boss/anything with Spike Traps (first time I fought Demogorgon I accidentally one-shot him with Spike Traps. I say "almost" because some bosses have multi-phases or transformations that make it less of a one-shot).


The Original Free Disengage
There is no such thing as opportunity attacks in BG2 - so you can freely disengage from melee any time you want. Even when chasing, enemies will almost never land a hit due to the clunky and slow attack animations. This exploit is extremely abuseable because the AI never does it to you.

In the most basic case exploit of this, you can use this to withdraw any hurt or losing combatants, and then reform via body blocking with your healthy tanks (who can also disengage freely) and force them to switch targets - making your HP more effective than the enemies, since you are essentially focus firing while they are not.

In the worst case of exploitation, you can essentially win many fights with melee enemies where you're outgunned by playing Starcraft with Pause. Have one party member draw aggro and run them in circles while the rest is "micro-ed" aways, shooting and casting as needed. Can be a bit of work, but skill requirement is limited thanks to pause.

Some bosses / high-level enemies do have very fast animations and can somewhat avoid the chase, but not fully (with some work you'll still derp them out). Obviously enemy casters / archers aren't as affected by this.


The Run Mid Fight and Rest Exploit
Can't get through a Lich's layers of buffs? You're out of spell? No need to stand and fight. Just run out of range (most easily via an area transition) and rest (best when you can run to an inn keeper). This dispels all the enemy buffs via duration, and you can just come back and kill them (most caster's contingencies only fire off once). If they have a second contingency (i.e. at 50% hp), just rinse and repeat. Alternatively, you can just do this because you're low on spells/hp. The primary victim of this is the poor Lich guarding Daystar in the City Gate district. However, this works on all the dragons (run out of their lair), Kangaxx (especially the 1st form which relies on buffs), and various others.


Clone Spells Cloned Expendable Items
This one sits more within the "in-game-mechanic" cheese, but it's too broken and obvious not to mention. Essentially, whenever you use a clone spell (Project Image, Simulacrum), the clone duplicates the quick slot items you have too. This means insanely powerful but expendable items, like the Protection from Magic scroll (2x only in BG2 - auto win against casters), can be used infinitely via this cheese. Even if you don't use it for something like the Protection from Magic scroll, just using this with something like a Rod of Resurrection (if casted on an alive party member, it's a instant, ranged full heal), is insanely powerful since now it doesn't consume any charges.

This trick was extra interesting in the original SoA, because you were level-capped to only be able to cast level 8 spells, but get access to level 9 scrolls (so you can cast a few via scrolls per game). With this trick, your casters could basically cast an unlimited amount of level 9 spells. It's less of an exploit in ToB since you'll get your own level 9 spells, but ToB also introduces Wish, which you can use to do this exploit an unlimited amount of times without rest.

Although the trick technically needs your mages to be able to cast level 7 spells, this isn't really the case thanks to Vhailor's Helm, which is available to you as soon as you get out of Irenicus's dungeon (prologue) and get enough money. While not usable by every class, you can still do the Rod of Resurrection or Protection from Magic scroll with it since those items can be used universally.