Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Enemies should follow the same rules

Positioning is called using tactics. Why would you send a whole party sauntering in to a probable hostile situation like idiots? If things most likely will turn out badly (for me, even if there is only a slight chance) then the smart thing to do would be having people in the best places to act accordingly.

Because of CR ... Circle of the Moon should get a CR 1 form, not one like the polar bear that is CR 2.

Not to mention the fact that I prefer brown and grizzly bears to polar bears personally

I think consistency is important. Enemies and NPC's can deviate from PC's rules-wise as per 5e, but a random nameless Githyanki or even a boss like Nere should never have a ridiculous ability score spread. That directly compares with PC's and it doesn't make sense enemies of the same race are so much stronger, tougher, smarter and more charismatic than anyone in your party. Why does cannon fodder get godly stats when heroes have to use point buy? The heroes should be the exceptional individuals who triumph even against unfair odds.

This is what a usual Gith should be like, not 16/18/17/16/18/16 style nonsense Larian gave them.


To make fights harder without inflating enemy stats, they should force the player to start the fight from a disadvantageous position for once (and no, the Gith fight doesn't count because they actually expect you to metagame the encounters like Swen does when he plays, and surprise them from the elevation even if you actually talk to them + the cheap res merchant makes death irrelevant so that risk doesn't really exist). Add more Gith rather than make the few extraordinary with insane stats and expect the player to metagame with knowledge the PC's don't have. But everywhere they let the player cheese and alpha strike the enemy from advantageous elevated positions. You can massacre the entire Zhent hideout by attacking from a position they will never be able to reach. With haste potions, void bulbs, poison and fire dips, and especially Shoves, it doesn't even matter if you give enemies +50hp and insane stats since they don't get a turn, or half of them are dead before they do. Auntie Ethel's 112hp easily go down in one surprise attack before she gets a turn. Larian's focus is off in designing encounters. They should focus more on the set-ups than just up the stats + include mandatory high ground everywhere. Where is the hallway fight where your tanks hold off a swarming goblin horde (melee, not spamming fire bombs or jumping over your tanks), and then suddenly they bring in reinforcements behind your?

The there's the extreme disregard for stats with fights like Grym or the Spider Matriarch, and overriding D&D stats with puzzle-like solutions. I don't like these fights. The puzzles are easily solved and then the encounter has no replay value. I prefer team and class based tactics for combat rather than a boring one-time puzzle to solve. The extreme invulnerabilities/vulnerabilities like Grym's are way too far out and create fights that belong in an arcade game rather than an RPG with systemic combat.

Sidenote, making all Gith fluent in Common takes the alien out of an alien race. There could have been other solutions. With only a few of them speaking common with an alien accent would have made all of the Gith much more exotic and cool. Now they're just humans with a different skin. Bit of a flavor fail since they come from another plane of existence.

I agree with you on all the stat stuff Varang. Just with regard to Gith though, That at least can be explained by the fact that it makes sense the queen would send Gith that speak common to try and find the artefact. They probably could have done more to give them an alien, unique accent but creating a new accent is difficult to do and keep consistent, and can too easily end up silly rather than cool, so I can't quite blame them for not going that route.

I appreciate the stuff they did do, though. The flavorful words sprinkled throughout. Ghaik. Kainyank. Istik. Etc.

Agree, but if you want to include an alien race as an integral part of the story, giving them their own language and accent is much more important than voiced squirrels or oxen.

They would send Gith who know Common, but not all of them would. There's a significant difference between two similar scenarios:

1 - They all speak fluent native English, or Common.
2 - The dragon rider speaks Common to you with a thick alien accent, but orders Sarth Baretha to kill you in Gith tongue. She responds in Gith.

Exactly ...
Thats why it confuses me so much that so many people around here concider it something unfair ...

Its not, you made a bad call, when you decided to simply run there ... now you made your combat a lot harder, deal with it or die. :-/

I know people dont like homebrew around here ...

But in this particular case, personaly i would preffer to take statistics from CR ... and leave collor of Bear fur on roleplay background of character ... as far as i know "being white" (wich is the only difference most people can tell between Polar Bear and Grizzly bear) dont give you any tactical advantage.

//Edit:
Would actualy like if that would be the case in BG-3 aswell ...
If we would get option for some animals to actualy choose our visual separately from our statistic, wich woulf be obviously fixed.

I presume some people would have heartattack bcs its yet another deviation from rules ... but i would like it. :P

Exactly.

This would be my guess aswell ...
If you remember, in past patches (til 4 or 5 i believe) Githyanki patrol had only around 45HP each ... almost half of their hurent pool.

But since players obliterated them too easily using exactly things you described ... Larian decided to boost them.

I mean just a two flask of Wyvern poison (wich i have allready EVERY single time i get here) makes huge difference ...
Give one to Astarion for his bow, another to Lae'zel on her sword ... then let them both drink Haste potion ... and the amound of damage they can do within single turn is ridiculous. :-/

Me too ...
But would aswell if i would know what those words mean, when i play Githyanki myself. :-/

I know you usualy get it from the context ... but what is difference between Istik and Vinisk?
Would be much better if they would provide traslation like: "Ghaik (Mind Flayer) wessel fallen from the sky."

I agree with you about all that, it would be a better, more interesting choice, I just personally don't find it strains disbelief to think that they could muster a handful of Gith that speak common. That having been said, I find that the game overall does a bad job of making the world really feel flavorful and unique, so while as an isolated incident I'm okay with it, it does speak to a broader trend in the game as a whole.

I don't think it's a bad call to have your whole party confront the Gith. You're trusting Lae'zel...

Nevermind there's a dragon there that could utterly wipe the floor with you.

But seriously. I like Lae'zel and figure the Gith are going to do exactly what they do, but I go so Lae'zel learns the hard way that her people are going to just kill her.

What frustrates me is:

The Gith are a bit too tough for level 4 or lower even if you don't have everyone run forward.

The dragon and rider leave for no good or logical reason. I'd like a better reason, please.

And finally, Lae'zel doesn't learn. Afterwards, she just blindly believes if we go to her creche, her people will cure her. Even after all that, she still nags you to go to the creche?

Yeah. I remember the first time it happened. I thought, "yep. I'm done with you. Nope. Not going to your creche. You're an idiot. They're going to split your head open."

Quote: And finally, Lae'zel doesn't learn. Afterwards, she just blindly believes if we go to her creche, her people will cure her. Even after all that, she still nags you to go to the creche?

I would say that that is VERY typical behavior.

People will NOT abandon their core beliefs, even if you show them they are wrong.

You can't change people (It can even be be harmful to try), you can only be true to your own values.

Yeah. True. Still frustrates me though. I did this big, hard fight against my better judgment for her, and she is still sold on it. I get it though. It makes sense. She's utterly brainwashed and sold out on Vlaakith.

Back on topic. It is rather foolish to approach the Gith at all, if you think about it. Dragon. There is a freaking dragon. That should kinda tell people... run! run fast!

The Gith are actually a great "situational ally", if you don't interact with them. They will fight the Mindflayers and disappear.

They are probably brainwashed to seek a "cure", so that they can be easily put down...but who knows.

While the Gith scene is basically ok, I'm also concerned this kind of "half-way there" design will continue for the rest of the game. It just feels like a missed opportunity to not flesh out these aliens more in that encounter and truly make them feel otherworldly. Such a lazy approach to not even try, considering the budget and scope of BG3. I feel this kind of lack of immersion in many places. Larian creates these clinical theme parks when an RPG needs a living breathing, believable world.

When the Gith speak to each other they shouldn't speak common and the ones that don't get to talk could still murmur something in their own tongue.

Agreed completely, if you play Githyanki yourself ...
Have some reservations if you dont ... but still agree it is possible (in certain scenarios) to thrust her.

Agreed 100%, twice around and even more!

I really dont want to bring real life politics into this ...
So please try as hard as you can to take this as pure theoretical example, not attacking anything personal ... i just say this bcs i believe it should be close enough to you, to understand my point ... okey?

I know you are very religious person GM ...
Now imagine situation, that i would show you single high-rank priest, that is pedophyle, and is sexualy abusing young boys, using church as a cover up ...

What would you presume?

- That the whole Church is rotten, completely corupted, and you should refuse them completely?
- Or that this one person is rotten, and abused this rightfull organisation to his own lowly desires?

That is why Lae'zel "didnt learn".
She simply presumes (and quite logicaly from her point of view) that Kithrak is corupted asshole, who makes really bad name to her people.

@Ragnarok

Sorry. My comment didn't translate well. I was being sarcastic. It was meant to go together with the sentence below as well. Like this:

I don't think it's a bad call to have your whole party confront the Gith. NOOoooo. You're trusting Lae'zel. That's all. Yeah.
Nevermind there's a DRAGON there that could utterly wipe the floor with you. Nah. Don't worry about it. You can take a red dragon at level 4 if things go south. Right?

I think Larian put the dragon there as sort of a major warning to players. It's a dragon, folks. Proceed with extreme caution. In fact, probably best to not proceed at all.

Still, problem is, it's a video game. So it's easy to develop the mentality that the player can and should be able to kill anything if they encounter it. So, we bravely waltz up to it and the Gith, expecting a challenge but nothing that would require more than a reload or 2.

Yeah. I've rethought the whole thing. In real life, first sign of the dragon and I'd be like, "Nice knowing you, Lae. You go ahead. Let me know how it goes later. Remember that when they kill you and toss your carcass down a cliff, that I warned you ahead of time. There is no other cure but death. That's what they'll say. K? You remember that I predicted it. K? But you do you. I think I'll take my chances with finding Halsin. Thanks. See ya!"

And about Lae'zel not learning, that's why I said to Van'tal, "Yeah. True. Still frustrates me though. I did this big, hard fight against my better judgment for her, and she is still sold on it. I get it though. It makes sense. She's utterly brainwashed and sold out on Vlaakith."

So, we agree. I mean, it makes sense. It just frustrates me. But then, there are so many times real people are truly like that. Most people, in fact, are very stubborn and don't learn. You can warn them all day long about impending doom, and you can show them signs and proof, but they will not change their ways.