Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Rework Grym fight

I think that Grym fight doesn't live up to player's expectations because of 2 things:

1.) An anvil plot-kill possibility that on one hand makes the boss too easy to beat, and on the other hand does not let you unleash the party abilities meticulously developed through the whole act.

2.) Damage immunity transiting into damage resistance. This once again makes you unable to unleash the party abilities meticulously developed through the whole act. The boss just doesn't care what mighty spell you've learned or a powerful item you've found. It doesn't care if you've made some creative and powerful party build. All it cares is getting clubbered to death.

What do you guys think of:
- Removing the plot kill or significantly weakening anvil's damage
- Increasing the Grym's HP while replacing natural immunity with natural resistance which would change to normal damage for some types upon superheating.

Let me know your opinion on that fight!

Its not a "fight" in true meaning of that word ... its much closer to puzzle.

I really liked it because I went the exact opposite of how it's supposed to be beaten. Played as a Githyanki Barbarian and just went full ape mode on the automaton. Took some time to smash, but was really fun ^^

Because otherwise it's not really a boss fight like the Bulette or the Hag if done the way it is meant to be done, but that isn't an issue since it is clearly there for those who wish to do it properly. Not to mention the in-game lore states the automaton being impenetrable.

But as far as expectations go... I don't know, I felt like I got exactly as was described by the three Drows.

I hate that fight.

It's a simple puzzle that basically ignores D&D combat rules and revolves around exploiting the environment, turn based system and a dumb AI you can control.

If you replay the fight with a new party it wont be any different from before. Solve the puzzle you already know how to solve. Handing out extreme immunities and vulnerabilities is not interesting, especially when you can just right click to basically metagame to learn them.

Level 4 PCs shouldn't be fighting Adamantine golems anyway. There are more appropriate enemies for bosses at those levels.

To be honest the resistance thing might make it a bit unfun to replay more than once but apart from that I actually liked the fight.

Looks cool. And "looks cool" is a strong argument in my opinion ^^.

Regarding Op suggesstions :
-Weakening his dmg is a huge nope for me. That thing has the size of a building. Pls one shot me.
-Increasing his HP while nerfing resistances during " overheating" sounds cool on paper. I guess spellcasters would struggle a bit less against him. They can still do their share of dmg if i remember correctly with lightning in current build.

I’m fine with this fight basically being a puzzle, with a way to win quickly when it’s solved. Yes, it’s pretty much the same every playthrough but you could make the same criticism about replayability of any puzzle elements once you’ve worked them out first time around, and I don’t think that’s a reason to exclude them.

I wouldn’t want lots of fights like that, but as a way to introduce some higher level enemies that your party otherwise couldn’t beat (or can, but it’s hard!), I’m happy with this and the spider queen fight. I’d prefer it wasn’t turned into an incredibly hard and frustrating “real” boss fight - for Grymforge that’s Nere and gang - and there’s no way it should be easy without a trick.

Oh, I meant weakening the dmg that the forge can deal to the boss, not weakening his own dmg potential. Because 2 anvil shots (kill shot count) can be made within 5-6 turns which kinda ruins the boss aspect of the fight...


Yeah I understand that point of view, it was the exact reason for one of my initial suggestions about weakening the damage you can deal to the boss with a forge or increasing its HP pool. Though the latter could also use an immunity -> resistance as a bonus, because as of now I hate those turns when you couldn't superheat him and you are just like ok it seems like I do nothing this turn then.

Can you please give a quick schooling here, for someone who had DnD in his life in its very casual iterations accompanied by a beer or two

Fights being an environmental puzzle is dumb. If you want to make a puzzle, make a puzzle. It's stupid an indestructible Forge Guardian has an achilles heel in it's own lair it's created to protect and basically nowhere else.

I need things to make more sense.

Hmm, I can definitely see where you’re coming from there, and I suppose it is a bit of an anti-climax that, with a bit of luck, you can kill this giant thing that makes such a dramatic entrance in a couple of turns. But then I can also see the point in not dragging it out, given that the “fight” will basically be the same each time once you’ve optimised your solution to the puzzle.


Yes, this also comes back to the (admittedly limited) replayability of this fight being about how to optimise your solution to the puzzle to, for example, reduce or eliminate those turns. Given this involves meta-gaming, I can see why not everyone would find it wholly satisfying, but I’m still of the view that the occasional puzzle like that is good to throw in the mix.

DOS1 had a similar fight mechanic to this. Only you had to lure this otherwise nigh-invulnerable enemy to a set platform and then insta-kill it with lava.

I didn't enjoy that fight and I don't enjoy Grym.

So, there is no ignoring DND combat rules then? This seems more like an opinion to me, which is fine, but has nothing about the rules in it.

Respectfully, hard, hard disagree.
The "party abilities meticulously developed through the whole act" are fun, but they already dominate almost every single fight. The combat of whittling down HP while controlling the action economy on the field is very monotonous. Indeed, while you have many choices in how you go about it, the only way to win a fight is to combine enough damaging moves and stat changes to defeat your enemy. I think there's a reason there's more to DnD systems than just the combat system; imagine if DnD was just roleplayed combat rolls. The Grym fight is the only fight in the entire game that follows a different pattern of encouraging you to remove immunity while luring to a specific spot on the board (and it informs you through lore). You can use your "party abilities meticulously developed through the whole act" at the Githyanki Patrol Fight, or the Hag Fight, or the Battle for the Grove, or the Nere Fight, or the Goblin Camp Fights, or the Myconid Fight, or the Spectator Fight, or all of the other fights. Different forms of combat with different objectives and different means of achieving those objectives are important in providing a varied experience to the game. Again, you are going to use the party abilities in the overwhelming majority of combat situations. This is a given, as Larian is certainly going to use the system they made for the game. Puzzle combat is not there to replace party ability combat, but to break up the monotony of objectives and means. For once, a situation where a warlock can't Eldritch Blast its way out of the matter is not too much. A wizard cannot cast into convenience; a fighter cannot bludgeon into obedience. This isn't a bad thing because the Grym fight is an exception, not the rule. I would be very, very disappointed if combat were boiled down to just a system of HP-whittling or stat modifying. I find that to be an unfathomably boring experience and think there is no good reason to remove puzzles from combat.

i would leave the fight as is and just add a weapon or two that downgrade one type of immunity to resistance. That would help with itemization as well.
Maybe they could be hard really hard to find runes for a weapons even protected by a puzzle if you want and you have to do side quest to unlock them...

+1
There should be a weapon called "Hot Hammer" in addition to the Anvil method, and the weapon should do just that. It would be alluded to by the Drow explorer's documents in each case.

Edit: Or maybe have a special bludgeoning weapon like that while requiring Grym to get regular "Heated" by fire magic. I still like the puzzle requirement though.

I had a thread sometime ago describing (among other things) my experience of going through that boss fight for the first time:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=100326&Number=808527#Post808527


The TL;DR is "I somewhat liked the gimmick even if it wasn't the most traditional D&D fight, but as it's often the case it was Larian's terrible controls and UI that made it slightly more miserable that it had any need to be.


EDIT - eh, I may as well quote directly the relevant part sparing to people the need to open another tab.

Oh hells, yes. I also had the party rush into the lava at the end of the fight at least once, and have had to reload more than once because it’s hard to see both your character and Grym at the same time, and therefore easy to miss when your ranged character is going to step just into the lava to get close enough to fire. I’ve not had any issues with toggling attacks of opportunity in this fight but that’s probably because I don’t even try to damage Grym conventionally and keep my characters far away. And the last two playthroughs I had Wyll and then a ranger MC who could use Hex and Hunter’s Mark respectively to attract Grym’s attention with 100% success at long range which made it really easy. But there were quite a few frustrating reloads in earlier runs to get me to that point, mainly due as you say to interface issues rather than not knowing what I was trying to do.

+1 to this take.
Having a puzzle combat which follows a different pattern from the rest of DnD combat CAN be fun, but,
the Larian UI and party-management mechanic that is required to solve said puzzle is really, really, really clunky. This is the one time where I would agree with the click-and-drag crowd that having a classic-style party management mechanic would be a world of an improvement over the current method (maybe not the only time, but this is the major time). Or something that better lets us take control of party members in specific groupings to move them to specific areas (which the chain system, with its one-character-at-a-time philosophy, doesn't really solve well). This is also like the first party management puzzle in the game (kinda like they had in DOS1 Part 1), and it's disappointing how much time just needs to go into basic positioning.

I'm fine with it as-is.

Puzzles and Puzzle Fights have always been a part of D&D, as well as fantasy literature.
Of course, appealing to anyone to actually READ something once in a while can fall on deaf ears...

The fight is awesome - if adding specific parameters for higher chance of success is a bad thing, why not remove all buffs, spells, and strategically crafted combat zones?

I think y'all are missing the entire point - if this golem WAS NOT at the forge, it would decimate everything in its path during current EA. The reason we are able to defeat it is BECAUSE of a chance discovery. The golem was crafted using the surrounding minerals and forged by a special forge with specific instructions for operation - if that same forge cannot destroy what it created, how would it have forged the parts in the first place?

This is a guided story, but you do not HAVE to fight OR defeat the golem if you do not want to - we do not know the ramifications for leaving it dormant, activating it and running, or defeating it. Where choices matter, a giant impenetrable golem seems like an extremely valuable weapon in the hands of some powerful people, and doubly valuable as a plot device.

The fact you unleashed it knowingly (after reading the texts and books around Grymforge) makes me question your decision in the first place. After you released it, would the ethical decision be to destroy it, given that Grymforge is occupied by a CULT??

Let's say you release the golem and leave it alone - it's still possible to forge while the guardian is there, though you need to have your entry and escape planned. Does the cult of the absolute figure out how to control it? Is there a power struggle between parties involved (only there as slaves or for profit anyways) over who controls this giant impenetrable robot?

We're in the Grymforge fighting a product of the Grymforge - where you see a gimmick, it is logic. What did you think the first time you experienced it blind?

If there is anything to complain about, it would be the crafted items from the forge not being enhanced/enchanted with a +1 at least. While the Splint/Shield/Helm reeling combo is insanely powerful on one character (funny seeing enemies at +40 reeling), each item on its own simply fills a niche on par with other items.

As far as characters running into lava, yeah, pathing decisions with lava are a little rough right now, but it's also entirely avoidable. My first time I had 1 character at each device required to operate the forge and did not experience any issues - that's player choice.