Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Gith Fight is Too Hard

OK. Got to the Gith Fight using Tabletop. Here are my observations:

1. Kith'rak Voss and Qudenos need a better reason to leave than, "I need to report to the others about our success." Nope. Don't buy it. He'd kill them first and claim the weapon for himself so he'd get more honor. Then he'd leave and tell the others. In the Afflicted story, I made it so that Shadowheart was not with the party meeting up with the Githyanki. Since she has the weapon, that gave him a reason to leave. Voss learned that Shadowheart had the weapon and she was elsewhere. So he left to go find her.

2. As soon as Voss finds out that Lae'zel is infected, why would he even believe a word she says? She was on the Nautiloid, and unless you got to the Gith on Day 1, most Gith would believe that her conscious mind was already gone. After all, standard Mind Flayer parasite procedure is to consume the host's brain within hours of infection. So he'd like believe she was a Ghaik (Mind Flayer) deception just trying to trick them.

3. The battle is too hard for level 4 characters and a party of 4. With this combination and standard Gith stats with a few tweaks (aka one was a cleric and one was a ranger - I was trying real hard to stay true to BG3's four Gith), the battle was End Game level of difficulty. If RNG goes south even remotely, it'll be very frustrating for players. A party of 6 might have a bit less of an epic, climactic battle and have it feel more like a tough battle that is challenging but not too much so, but a party of 4... no way. It's too much. The party had to use a bunch of potions of speed and healing potions, and they barely survived. (Again, without height advantage and such, which turns the game even more on end with RNG.) The party barely won the fight, and this only because I had to flub a few rolls and throw in a few things to assist them. (For example, when Gale fell, I made it so that he began to emit his toxic energy around him. This hurt the Githyanki near him for a few HP lost. I explained this as Gale not having his fix for a few days now, and when he was taken down, his internal issue became unstable.)

I like this fight, I do. I just think it's too much for 4 party members at level 4. Either the Gith need to be majorly nerfed, as if they got into some huge fight before they battle your party, or there needs to be fewer Githyanki OR better yet, give us a party of 6. It's the only way to keep this from being one of the worst fights in the game.

This said, don't get me wrong, the party of 4 could have succeeded without me flubbing a few rolls if RNG had been more in their favor. However, it was not, but it was not against them either. So, you never want to base a fight on whether RNG is going to go your way or not unless it is possibly the last epic fight of the entire campaign. For RPG fights to be fun, the DM should set the difficulty for fights like this one at more like Medium or maybe hard so that they feel like the fight is challenging if RNG goes poorly and just plain fun if the RNG goes well for them.

Just to be clear ...
Is this one of "i write a fanfiction" or "i tryed tabletop session" topics?
Or are we talking about actual game experience from that game? O_o

The fight is not intended for the team on level 4. In the full version of the game you should already have level 5 at this stage.
Difficult fights are the way (and in my opinion the best) to make it harder for a player to access certain areas early in the game. Once you reach level 5, the fight will be much easier.

It depends if you listen to Lae'zel or not... If you listen to her and hurry you can easily reach that zone at level 3 or 4.

Will we be supposed to clean close to everything in this part of act 1 not to have a too hard time on that encounter ?

Shouldn't the surface be designed for level 2-4 characters and the underdark for level 4 with eventually a few combats for level 5 ? (Bulette)

It would make more sense and it would probably lead to a more fluent experience.
The underdark is already a smooth division of the map. It would be cool not to have the feeling you have a very specific path to follow.

I think DnD is pretty balance to avoid this.

Having to leave the underdark because you're not powerfull enough or because you feel you're really in danger make sense. Avoid the gith patrol or any other encounter on the surface because you're not level 5 don't at all... Especially if a character ask you to go there as fast as you can when you have reached level 2.

That's one genuine design problem with this encounter: it's not just that it's "too hard" (honestly in a way or another I already beat it consistently across three different playthroughs, so it can be done).
It's that a caustic combination of "very tough fight" + "misleading the player through a companion dialogue into thinking it's a good idea to get there as soon as possible" + "making very hard to back off and leave on your legs once the event is triggered" (once Lae'Zel rushes ahead to meet the patrol you aren't left with many options but follow her or pick up her dead body shortly after).

There's a lot of wrong with it and I can guarantee you that if some of us are just "struggling a bit" with it, a lot of more casual players and or game journalists are going to get an ulcer over it.

The whole encounter feels like a rough draft. There is a good encounter in there but it just needs a few things.

One of which you just alluded to, there needs to be more roadblocks between you and that encounter. Because Lae'zel to Druid Grove, to Blighted Village (since you have to pass through) to Gith is a bad idea. You will be level 3 if you are lucky and unless you make the dialogue checks - you are dead.

Can you Rez Lae'zel after she gets herself murdered?

Not even that.
if she dies outside of the party it's a permanent death.

Yes. Yes to all the above.

While writing my The Afflicted fan fiction, I played it through via Tabletop rules with genuine Tabletop stats for enemies, etc.

I also have played through this fight in the video game many times. It is one of those fights where you have to start over from your last save a lot depending on RNG. Unless, of course, you know what's coming and position your party on the gate so you have high ground.

So, my point is that the battle is too tough for 4 level 4 or lower characters no matter what way you slice it unless you use height advantage. 9 times out of 10, in the video game, the Gith will Misty Step to the high ground and hit you multiple times in one round, effectively reducing your characters to nothing before you can even get a chance to get to high ground.

But even with Tabletop rules, it's a brutal battle and way too hard. With Lae'zel and Gale and a Ranger and Cleric of Life Domain, they barely won and only because I flubbed a few rolls.

So, my verdict is:

1. Increase party size to 6.

2. Add more roadblocks to prevent players from getting there until level 5 at least.

3. Make the Gith battle worn. In other words, decrease their HP by half so they are weaker from having already been in some fights. Not every enemy is full health when you fight them.

One of these, at least, would likely fix the issue.

It could be for survey purposes. To gauge how well the existing mechanics perform on such difficulty, and to get data on how players handle it. Or, you know, maybe they just forgot that there was still this fight intended for higher levels that should have been nerfed or left out of the EA altogether.

Perhaps. It has clearly shown how broken mechanics are in this game currently.
For many people this encounter is hard if they try to go at it as a direct encounter, which dialogue encourages.
But game design encourages the opposite and there are any number of ways to absolutely devastate them with no challenge while essentially not caring about the 5e rules.

Barrels
Shove/Throw
Sneaking Madness
Infinite Imps at Infinite range
Army of Undead
Army of Immortal Undead Children With Clubs
Solo (non-EK) Fighter With Scrolls and Consumable
A Combination of Any of These

What even is this lol

Don't know what these mean either but they also sound like tons of fun.

What are you talking about?

I could not agree more. When I first played through EA I genuinely thought that the Gith patrole quest was actually the main story thread I should have been following. You get it so early on. Lae'zel is the first companion you meet, it's the first solid lead on a cure that you get, on a meta level it really feels like it should be the main story path and it bugs me a whole lot.

Glut in the underdark can cast Animate Dead on any "humanoid" NPC as long as you throw the body into the underdark. If you do it on a dead child the child will not take aggro. You can also cause an undead Minotaur to throw its weapon, giving said undead child a weapon. Whenever they attack they seem to fail to get aggro and even then won't die.

Another undead army is the wand you get as a reward from the hag quest can be used nigh infinitely (only the timelimit on the zombies matters) at a really long range meaning it is possible to just overwhelm the gith with zombies. Even stronger is go into turn based before hand and just trade that wand between characters making 4 times the zombies.

With 2 Warlocks, one that is Wyll and one that is the PC I find that you do not even need to fight in encounters. It is longer than other strategies but you can essentially have your party miles away. Have both Warlocks summon imps. Make the imps invisible and send them toward the gith patrol. Both attack with advantage cause sneak. And then as long as combat is frozen on one imp's turn you can essentially just keep resummoning the other imp, attacking again and again. I did this AWHILE ago so might have gotten patched. If the warlocks get dragged into combat despite being miles away, you only gotta make em flee I think but I didn't have that happen.

There are so many ways to break this game currently, which is to be expected cause EA, that generally it is not hard to find many many many strategies to just not have any risk in fights.
I only listed strategies I had done by testing things or know off the top of my head.

Soft roadblocks is one of the better ways to go about it. Currently, there's nothing directly between the Blighted Village (level ~3) and the Gith. The burning village is almost in the way, but it doesn't actually grant much exp.

The map/encounters should be rearranged so that the gnoll and paladin/tiefling encounters are on the way to the Gith, with the encounter immediately before the Gith being a difficult but doable fight for level 4 characters. Alternatively, an additional such encounter could be created on the path from blighted village to the Gith. Players would thus be warned that the Gith encounter, if it leads to combat, will be even harder for level 4 characters.

Importantly, players are not prevented from reaching the Gith as they can either beat or sneak past ^ encounters. It's just made more difficult for lower-level parties to accidentally reach them.

This i did for my first playthrough ...
I was like "oh they just burned those dudes for no particular reason ... better hide my backup here, in case something went wrong."

And it went sooooo wrong.

Also, i know they tend to misty step a lot ...
But that is kinda your advantage, unless you are one of those people who refuses to shove/throw/thunderwave/etc. no matter how covenient situation is.

And finaly ... there are other things you can use ...
You see Gith patroll, all level 5 ... and there is 5? 6? of them? Not quite sure right now ... so make sure, you have all buffs you can get before you even go talk to them (as i said "in case something went wrong") is also not bad idea ... for example, this (and Bulette) is the only fight, i ever used resistance potion, strength potion, and swiftness potion ... and it helps A LOT!

I wasn't really asking for advice on how to defeat the battle. I know a lot of things that you mentioned. The point is that the battle is too difficult for four level four characters. I have played this part many times and it can be one of the most frustrating battles in the game. It should not be frustrating. It should be fun. I don't mind a challenge, but this goes beyond being a challenge whether you play it in the video game or via tabletop. Most new players are going to struggle with this fight and get frustrated. At first, they will likely think the part is awesome, but when their characters die in one round, that is not so fun.

Ive played 300+ hours of BG3, and recently tried this battle again. My characters lost initiative. All of them. Lae'zel died in 1 turn before she got to act, and my ranger was taken out next, also before he acted. The Gith Misty Stepped to high ground, and it was all over. I was dead in 3 rounds because once one is down, it snowballs.

A lot of fights in this EA aren't built around proper Enemy Scaling. Larian WANTS YOU to use Degenerate Cheese even if you don't want to. This could only change in the Full Version with no Low Level Cap so People just decide how to approach Encounters. I still believe the Low Level Cap they are thinking for this game is a really dumb idea when you have games like Pathfinder going for 20s. I know it's more a matter of not wanting to Work on Content than being Overpowered, it's obvious when you could easily Nerf anything if you ever wanted. All the Busted Homebrew Gimmicks also don't help their Weak Argument about being Overpowered in High Levels. So unless they think about an actual D&D Game that doesn't revolve solely around gimmicks to survive encounters and kill enemies nothing is really going to change.

And i'll tell you what was the Biggest Problem with D:OS2. Not having Character Progression after Driftwood. You already saw all Skills, Spells and Features by then and there was nothing else to look for on Leveling. It becomes a complete Drag of Soulless One Shot Stat Scaling Fest and very few carefully planned Encounters to make it interesting enough. Abusing Instant Death Scripts/Effects is not enough.

Oh i know you didnt ...
You wanted only people to nod that this battle is overwhelmigly hard ... well, "it" is not ... you just made it so hard. :-/