Yeah, the two builds/combos described at the beginning are devastating and in fact completely OP.
Which raises a natural question :
is the existence of these OP combos a good thing ?And the immediate follow up if the first answer is no :
what went wrong ?I don't think the existence of these OP combos are that good. Then, the question for me would be : is it rather "not good but, honestly, I don't care too much" or is it more "not good and, really, Larian should try to address that" ?
I think I tend to lean more toward the latter :
it's not good, and Larian should look into that.
The key thing that makes me lean more toward this answer is the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 can be played in
Multi-Player mode.
(In fact, there is a case to be made for the description of BG3 as a game that "
you can also play Single-Player, although really, Larian is designing under the assumption that there will be 2-4 human players, each controlling a single character, and that this is how they are doing 100% of their internal testing". But that's another story. At any rate, BG3 is clearly advertised as Multi-Player. It's not something that you can merely "also do".)
It's common advice for tabletop groups that all of the players, or none of the players, should have an optimised characters. And that's something that should be discussed during session 0.
You don't want a mix, because DnD is a cooperative game, and everyone should get to have their moment where they shine and make a difference. If one player has an optimised character and constantly outperforms the rest of the group, it's probably less fun for said rest of the group.
If a player plays BG3 with their partner, they can probably do the session 0 discussion. I mean, this applies to any close, regular, tightly-knight group of players. But in a more casual group of 3-4 friends, who are all video gamers but with one who is also BG3 expert/rules-savvy, and the group isn't aware of the tabletop/coop game common wisdom about optimisation and relative balance, there is easy potential for mismatch to happen.
I'm not saying OP builds should not exist. It's fine, to some reasonable extent. And in DnD 5E, there is room for somewhat OP combos. But I think that
Larian's ruleset only exacerbates the difference of impact between an OP built character and a more normal one (i.e. the difference between floor and ceiling is greater in BG3 than in 5E).Which brings me to the second questions : what is the cause of this ?
One obvious one : the Circlet Of Fire. And particularly the fact that
it's an item that grants additional Bonus Actions.
There's a paragraph in the DMG, p263, that reads
Beware of adding anything to your game that allows a character to concentrate on more than one effect at a time, use more than one reaction or bonus action per round, or attune to more than three magic items at a time. Rules and game elements that override the rules for concentration, reactions, bonus actions, and magic item attunement can seriously unbalance or overcomplicate your game.
I know that Larian is public and proud about not caring for balance. But they are making a more-than-just-optionally-multiplayer game, and relative balance between players is something they should probably care about.
Another obvious cause :
unrestricted Long Rests and the availability of spells slots.
I don't think I have a strong opinion about the forbidding casting of multiple levelled spells in the same turn, whether it should be a general rule, a Quicken-specific rule, or not a rule at all (as it is in BG3). I suppose I don't mind casters going nova one turn. So long as they have to think about the spending of their resources (namely, spell slots).
But since BG3 allows Long Rest at will, everyone (and notably spell casters) can start all combats with full resources. So the above Sorcerers and Sorlocks (or pseudo-Sorlocks) can unleash their most OP combo and/or rotation like there's no tomorrow (I mean ... the game has no satisfying notion of time, so in a sense, yes, there's no tomorrow).
