They have been blinded by their own clever and honestly amazing area design with a lot of verticality. That's why everything teleports and jumps and that's why Phase Spiders have been "adapted" to their multi-level cave environment. But that's where it goes wrong. It's time to kill your darlings, Larian. Or at least take the verticality glasses off to see the real big picture.

Phase Spiders would be more lethal and tactically interesting if they behaved like they should and used their powerful bite (1d10+2 + 4d8 poison). Add Spitting Spiders separately as an extra flavor to that cave if you want annoying spiders that need to be hunted down or killed with ranged weapons.

If everything teleports and jumps and all battlefields are about getting the high ground, you lose tactical depth. It gets old. I want to be able to park my Fighter next to a Minotaur and properly THREATEN it so the Fighter can do their job and protect the party. Minotaurs and Hook Horrors jumping around is really annoying. It makes you feel like you have no control whatsoever over the battlefield. Tactics mean you have to have some control.

The Gnoll Hunter multiattack is just asinine. The crazy burst damage underlines the worst aspects of RNG at low levels. I thought Elven Archers were legendary, but I guess it was Gnolls all along since they fire arrows three times faster than my dedicated Wood Elf archer.

Giving Goblins less AC and more HP has been brought up many times, how that small change destroys Sacred Flame and every other spell or attack that targets saves instead of AC. Giving a random Githyanki Gish crazy ability score spread where everything is 14+ also screws up balance with attacks that target saves.

Overall, it seems that 5e is a very balanced and well tested system that just makes sense. I haven't played it but I have read the rules now because of BG3. And Larian took a sledge hammer and are just rampaging all over it, messing things up and fixing things that weren't broken in the name of "video game" which really means "we want everything to play like DOS". Nevermind that there are many D&D CRPG's that play very well and didn't need these video game tropes.

Last edited by 1varangian; 29/07/21 09:50 AM.