Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Patch 5 combat encounter difficulty discussion

Overall thoughts below, please disagree if you would like!

Firstly, in my opinion, Patch 5 gets rid of something irritating - the propensity to leapfrog around to get backstab advantage. I like flanking rules and think they can work well in games, but in my experience Pathfinder:kingmaker is RTwP and they work well in the messiness of the combat there. Here, in turn based, I am not so sure. It is impossible for me to really comment without experiencing two different systems. Overall the removal of backstab is good.

Stealth - is very powerful, as one would expect for sneaking up on someone and nuking them. I think that is fine. People have complained about re-stealthing in combat: I have not used this all that much but can understand that it can seem a bit ridiculous. the Baldur's Gate mod SCS design philosophy was not to take away tools and towys, but to provide enemies with counters to them - that worked in RtWP since as soon as you went invisible enemy mages would tend to cast Detect Invisibility, Invisibility Purge or at higher levels True Sight. In a turn based game this is much harder since stealthing (if successful) then allows an attack from stealth with advantage before an enemy has a turn. Perhaps a way to do this is that in combat stealth should 1) Perhaps only be possible if you have stealth proficiency or are a rogue (or adjacent class) and 2) Be made with disadvantage? This is just random thoughts based around the fact that it seems too powerful. If it is in as it is at the moment then Enemies should be using it as well, which would probably cause all sorts of issues. So some sort of toning down perhaps.

Barrels - All I want is that if you put one down in a potentially hostile area someone comes up to you like in the theft/assault dialogue and challenges you for which you need to make a check to not trigger combat. For example you put down a barrel of explosives in the Goblin Camp and are challenged, if you pass a check the goblins are fine with it, if you fail they twig that something is up.

Height Advantage - Some days I like it, some days I hate it! I'm easy either way.

New Combat Tactics - Improved but still somewhat lacking. Bugs and some erroneous AI issues weaken current ability of enemies. It feels like a move in the right direction but is not there yet.

Maneuverability in combat - Still a major issue for me. Accidental AoOs, irritating pathing and the very large detours characters have to take around others due to large "hit boxes" are one of the main letdowns.

Enemy Targetting - feels much more forgiving.

Endlessly helping people up who are bleeding out - Yeah, you can do this just like you could at the beginning. If you are fighting few enough enemies with only single target attacks then ultimately you can just lift people up every round. I am not fully opposed to this but it feels like something that should not be present for harder, or even core, difficulties.

Encounter difficulty - some changes to AI have made a couple of encounters feel a bit harder. Changes to Githyanki health and AI has made them much harder. Some things have been toned down. Overall it does not feel all that much harder outside of the Githyanki patrol and some AI oddities, and in many areas feels easier due to Patch Noted changes.

Combat related Magic Items - One thing I think BG3 is doing right at the moment is magic items. Rare is the game that seems to get magic items right - Most RPGs I have played have had disappointing Magic Item systems to me (Super Randomised, or Prioritizing Crafting over exploration/purchase), while BG1 and 2 magic Items were all either found in exploration or pruchased for high but not excruciatingly high prices. This is not a comment on item abundance something which has been highlighted as potentially too high, this is a comment on itemisation style. You feel like items are either found while exploring or bought for large but not impossibly high prices - just like the originals. Those items are interesting with varied effects, they are not all "+1 to X", some are clearly much more powerful than others: I support this. And like in BG1 and 2 there is possibility to build characters around certain items.

Spells - I think other people have laid out issues with Spells much better than I can, but suffice to say that in almost every encounter you are better off Casting Magic Missile, Shatter or Guided Bolt than anything else in the spell-pools. There's some issues with this.

BOOAL fight - made easier, hard disagree, I liked this as a fully optional difficult fight.

Combat difficulty feels, overall, suitable for a "normal difficulty" and on a personal note, much more enjoyable than the other 5e game - I don't know why this is, it just does for me. I don't like 5e compared to 2e and Pathfinder but I do seem to like this. Annoyingly I can't remember many of my critical issues any more.