Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Did they nerf hex?

I am not 100% sure, but I think this is new.
If I recall correctly, Hex used to break concentration after the kill and grant you a "recast hex" option. As of now it seems like you continue to concentrate after making the initial kill of the hexed enemy and as soon as this concentration breaks - reapply hex option becomes unavailable. Was it nerfed or am I seeing ghosts?

Hex is breaking faster now for some reason. But you can still reapply hex if it was on a dead character.

You can reapply it, but as long as you maintain concentration. I think previously the ability to reapply it wasn't tied to concentration at all. From my POV it is a huge nerf, because you can't now concentrate on other spells in between the hexes.

According to this: http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/spell:hex

It seems to be closer to Raw ...
I mean, feel free to corect me, but doesnt "on a subsequent turn of yours" mean that when we were holding it indefinietly ... resp. "up to long rest" was wrong?

Yeah it was not according to the 5e rules, I was just not sure if it ever was as I remembered at all...

Well ... it is now ... at least closer to it, if not anything else.
Presuming i read it corectly ofc.

It may have changed in patch 8, but I choose to pretend that patch never existed. In any case, the nerf is real. Between Wyll’s low Dex, low Con and BG3’s overall hostility towards concentration, I think I managed to Reapply Hex only once during 20-ish hours of patch 9.

Wyll's stats are terrible out of the box, but you can fairly dramatically improve his defense by taking moderately armored. Not hard to get him to 19 AC with medium armor and a shield.

That said, I also stopped using hex after a while. With level 3 spells available I just had him use his slots for counterspell, twice per short rest.

Imo if Wyll is getting hit then you are using him wrong, I tend to have him carry a crate around to climb up onto during combat then Hex/ blast until everyone is dead

Astarion gets better mileage out of medium armour yes

Wyll definitely benefits more from medium than Astarion does. Wyll with mage armor has AC of 14. Wyll with moderately armored + shield + best medium armor gets to 19 AC. This is a huge difference.

Astarion with mage armor has 16 AC. Give him +1 dex with an ASI and he goes to 17. You could give him moderately armored and also get to 19 AC, but the improvement is minor, and you have to use a shield to get there (w/o shield moderately armored does NOT improve his AC at all relative to mage armor, and gives only a 1 point bonus over studded leather).

Thanks for pointing this out, folks. I’d noticed Wyll seemed to have less opportunity to reapply Hex in my latest run but hadn’t got round to working out why, so you’ve saved me the bother.

I did feel it was more balanced in patch 9, as I could usually manage to reapply Hex within a battle, as long as nothing really drastic happened, but not in fight after fight which seemed a bit too cheap.


Well, everyone can and should play however they wish, but it made me giggle to think of this as the right way to use Wyll! I’m sure it’s effective, but personally I’d find carting round a crate to stand on pretty immersion breaking. I like to at least pretend things are semi-realistic, despite the fantasy setting and oddities of the game mechanics

The change would bring it closer to 5e RAW, yes, but I was okay with Hex not taking up your concentration while it wasn't actively on a target, as a gameplay-transitional change. It was one of those QoL for video game changes that was fair and acceptable, in my opinion - it's still in danger of begin broken when you're actively holding the hex on a target, but in between reapplications, it's okay for it to sit in the back of your mind and not take up any extra space, for a video game. It's base-line duration is an hour, which in Larian-game terms has been expanded to functionally mean 'until you rest'; I would change that to end when you Short-rest, but otherwise I'd let keep it as it was initially, and only hold your concentration when it's active.

It's curious that even when rules are implemented faithfully RAW, they play differently on a computer than on a tabletop. You see it in Solasta too - Hex and Hunters Mark are a lot weaker, because the computer studiously makes every concentration check, whereas checks are often simply forgotten about in tabletop games.

Eh, I don't know about that... my games are all pretty on point with making their con saves when taking damage - my sorcerer is edging closer to the day when she's finally 'chip-proof' - that is, cannot fail a DC10 Con save, and so cannot lose concentration on damage under 22 - and it's an exciting milestone to be anticipating ^.^

There are exceptions, of course, but there are a lot of other factors, not related to rule implementation, than make computer D&D feel different to PnP D&D. The computer can handle a much greater number, and much more diverse, foes than a human DM; the computer can instantly calculate to hit odds without breaking a sweat and select targets accordingly; battle maps are often larger, making ranged combat more important relative to melee, etc.

You're not wrong for the most part - Someone should probably tell Larian though, as they don't seem to be aware of it. Especially:


These two things Larina's vision of D&D is drastically inferior and unsatisfying, compared to normal table top games. Most especially that last one.

The second one I think they are aware of, considering that spell/attack ranges were cut or adjusted compared to D&D tabletop. As for the first one - do you think that battle encounters in BG3 can be more balanced if the amount of enemies per encounter gets lower? I think it could be a healthy change both in terms of reducing the overwhelming amount of factors that mingle with your concentration and in terms of increasing the value of Saving Throw Spells. If the enemies were fewer but bulkier.

Hex and Hunter's Mark seem to have been "nerfed" in the sense that they now correctly require you to maintain concentration even when it isn't on an active target. Was it nice to get around the concentration before? Yes, but I'm fine with the game matching tabletop on this one.

It's not really "Larian's vision". You get these with any computer version of D&D, from Solasta to Wrath of the Righteous. It's the limitations of a human DM that keeps the number of combatants low and the locations small.

The change is fine, but one departure from RAW that would make a lot of sense in BG3 is to streamline Hex to automatically debuff/curse *all* abilities. Would get rid of a significant time-waster for Warlocks and allow combat to flow better...especially, shudder to think, if running with both Wyll and a custom Warlock.