Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General AoE attacks

Does anyone else feel like AoE attacks are just utterly worthless? Spells, Ranger abilities, Bombs, Fire Arrows - Everything just seems to be completely not worth using, because 7/10 times the AoE will just be resisted by a save throw.

I get the idea, but it just feels like at level 4, level 1 goblins shouldn't be just consistantly resisting my AoE attacks.

Depends. If you are using AoE attacks that use DEX save then yes that is more often resisted than other saves which is common in the first act of BG3. Then there are AoE spells that you can save but still take half damage like fireball.

There is nothing more devastating in whole Early Acess than Shatter.
Especialy when your enemies are so kind to stack.

Killed 5 Kuo Toa in single turn (two casts ... one before combat, and one since Gale was first in initiative) ...
Reduced HP of all Duergars on their ship to half, since in this case they win the initiative ... and kindly stack together.
Same story with Githyanki patrol ... true i used my tank as a bait, but they take it, so everything was well in the end.

So i would never call AoE worthless. O_o

About others, i have other experience ... usualy when enemy use Fire Arrow on me, they even can criticaly miss, yet i get 1d4 Burning damage, from AoE, sometimes im even set ablaze and get another two 1d4 ...
So in total 3-12 dmge dealt even tho you missed, that is not bad deal if you ask me ... and its breaking concentration is really anoying.

Some the reason why is that the enemies we fight the most frequently now in the early levels have good reflex saves. This is likely not true for the rest of the game.

However in 5e I in general feel that saving throws against spells are too easy. It’s already a limited resource and the spells don’t disable for long or do too much damage. But this is a 5e comment more than anything else.

Alot of low level spells are 'all or nothing' so if an enemy passes a save they dont get any damage or side effects. I wouldnt call it bad though, you still often have multiple chances to do something rather then only have 1 effect or damage 1 target.

Good DEX saves and stupid high HP because apparently players hate missing attacks so much HP had to be adjusted. So instead of having 7 HP like in the tabletop, Goblins have 20+.

Well that's the price to pay for making a TB game (good one). At least they are still not the bloating stats like in pathfinder.