Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Saving Throws vs AC Balance

Not enough, it would seem. The reality of play simply does not support your opinion except individual specific cases, which I have to assume have been your personal experiences, but they are in the minority and against the averages if so. Late game, fighters are king of damage and paladins are close behind. 1-4, there's rough parity, with casters having more flexibility; 5-10 casters have a slight leg up; 11 onwards, fighter and paladin take over and never look back. Some classes regularly and reliably hit the 60+ damage-per-turn bracket at high levels, and without spending any large or long-rest resources; none of them are casters. Casters, on the other hand, regularly meet the same challenge by using their extremely limited long rest resources to get anywhere close to that damage, and often have the target simply no-sell them/reduce to a fraction of that outright regardless, with nothing they can do to prevent it. They retain much more flexibility, but it's highly contingent - unlike martials, whose likelihood of hitting becomes a near certainty at high levels, the likelihood of creatures saving against your DC (which is harder to raise and rises by less overall), only increases at the higher levels, where creature save bonuses continue to climb, and AC remains stable.

Also, outsourcing your opinions to other people's guides does not make you seem like you really understand what you're talking about; use your own reasoning, or talk about why you recommend it. I'm not seeking to convince you - you are free to take this information on board or not, as you please, I'm just sharing it.


No, they are not. As I said, numerous enemies in the EA have higher stats than they should, and thus higher saves as a result; this makes save spells less effective.
There are many other factors in play as well that make saves less effective than they should be, and folks here have discussed and mentioned several of them (discussed heavily in other more detailed threads); most of the current control effects are easily broken by damage, or are maintained with concentration, and the game has a lot of extra sources of extra or guaranteed damage that are Larian additions (as discussed heavily and in more depth in other more detailed threads). The timing that the game uses for saving throws and save-outs is also messy, and can result in targets saving out of effects before you get any effect from them, even if they fail the initial save and you stick your spell (as discussed in detail in other threads as well). It's not the hard mechanics being different, in this case, it's the game itself as Larian has made it that introduces many other factors that inhibit saving throw spells in ways that they do not hinder attack rolls spells - and control spells, which you point out the value of, are the things that suffer most here.