Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Potion throwing

Potion throwing encompasses everything that is wrong ( or great if yo love the following) with the Larian way of doing RPG things.

Non immersive.
Completely unbalanced cheese.
Silly visuals.
"If you don't like it, don't use it" designed mechanics.

So 100% stays for final release.

I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the potion bombs. I did think it was a bit weird to begin with, but on reflection I don’t think it does much harm, given throwing a potion takes an action and therefore has a significant opportunity cost, plus the HP recovered is low for common potions, so don’t see it as particularly unbalancing. I very rarely find throwing a potion is the best choice for my party, or the enemy.

But it does give a bit more party composition flexibility, by giving an option for healing other party members for classes that don’t have healing spells. I was able to use them a couple of times to avoid TPKs when I was running without healers, when otherwise I’d have ended up reloading, which would have been a pain, and actually I kind of liked the option of throwing a potion as a last ditch, desperate attempt to stay alive.

The only gripe I have with this is how potion throwing make the help action and some spells obsolete. Considering how plentiful health potions are, a ranged AoE heal that doubles as a help action is a bit much for an action that absolutely anyone in your party has access to (much like shove was also a disengage in disguise).

The ennemy only has healing potion so yes, it may not often be the best choice. In fact in my playthrough it is often a bad choice for them as they are usually healing both his ally and my character(s).

But you, as the player can use it with all kind of potions so it definitely is a very powerfull choice.
Full party invisible, full party giant hill strength, full party resistance, full party haste. Cheaper than 4 level 3 spellslots!

Not using it myself as I find the mechanic both ridiculous and overpowered... but that's definitely another cheesy/overpowered/optimized option that allow players to bypass the challenge and some of the core mechanics set up by the devs. Which looks very wierd to me in a turn-based combat system.

Yes, agreed. I find it’s extremely rare that either I or the enemy can get AoE benefit from healing potion throwing because of this.


Fair point. I forgot you could do this. Like you, I think it’s cheesy so don’t do it. As long as enemies don’t either, I can live with it, but ideally it would be fixed. Personally, I’d be fine if potion throwing only worked if the bottle were thrown directly at a creature and only affected that one individual (plus gave them some minor damage from the broken glass which I think it does already).

Tbh, I’d not weep if potion throwing were removed entirely, though as mentioned above I do like having it as an option for some situations.

Truthfully, a lot of these things I don't have all that much issue with individually. I even agree with Sven's stance that leaving in a few cheesy tactics here and there for players is a fun thing that's fine to do. My pro lem is that there's so MUCH of it. So many different weird breaks in how things work, it all adds up into feeling like they don't really care about what they're doing. It makes it all feel sloppy and frustrating, less like they're leaving it all in on purpose and more like they just can't be bothered to take it out. Like there's no quality control.

That would be better to me too... but it would still be wierd.
What I'd like the most would be something like that :
- being able to administer a potion in melee (action)
- being able to throw a potion towards someone (action) that has to grab it (saving throw or something) and drink it (reaction).

Currently no damages are done when you throw a potion. The damages you see are done to the potion bottle, not to the characters


Totally agree.
They made it with core mechanics of such games like potions and common actions (to name shove), which may make them occur a lot too often to my taste.

I like your ideas of administering a potion and catching potions. A combination of the help function + administer healing potion I find even better. If I'm not mistaken this was once suggested in other threads with a succesful Medicine check by using a healers kit or something like that.



Can you also confirm this for NPCs and what if you throw the potion next to NPCs does the impact cause dmg followed by a loss of sympathy or not? It is conceivable that the impact damage of Healing Potions will be evaluated in the same way as a Smoke Powder Bomb or Alchemist's Fire, especially if e.g. crates are damaged, then NPCs will also become hostile or lose sympathy. Something like this should also be taken into account.

This sums it up perfectly.

Larian's got the clown-world market covered. Modders will have to cater to the spoilsports who are into immersion, game balance and other such malarkey.

...still hoping against hope for a vanilla "D&D rules" difficulty option though.

They just don't get immersion or "how to craft a credible and consistent game world" over at Larian. It's the cartoony shoves, gamey teleportation networks that don't make sense, fast traveling out of inescapable locations, whack-a-mole combat with Help action, and the senseless potion throwing. To name a few.

If someone thinks it's "fun" for whatever reason, it's in. Consideration ends there unfortunately.

The game is presented as mature and realistic, yet the gameplay is goofy and cartoony with absurd actions that defy both physics and common sense. Like a platformer game. This juxtaposition, or lack of clear game direction what style of game BG3 should be, is what stops BG3 from being a masterpiece for me. Consistency. Dark Souls is consistent. Super Mario is consistent. BG3 is all over the place.

You can't tell me to not use potion throwing if I don't like it. The damage is already done. I think the game is stupid for such things that are entirely unnecessary to begin with.

My exact gripe. If it was just a less powerful potion heal, it's whatever. I can just not use it. Enemies can't exploit it and it'd allow greater party flexibility. As is, it feels like a full blown exploit

The melee option of administrating a potion to an ally sounds good.
Summons drinking potions can stay.

I don't really care...but they could turn off moving items between character if outside of melee range when in combat. Out of combat- magic pockets etc can stay.

Some summons administrating potions- sounds good.

Actually if a class has a ranged help action, then maybe ranged administer potions is ok.

If larian removes healing cloud from potion, then have a check, if has potion in inventory= unlocks melee range spell to use potion on an ally. Or code a melee range healing spell...even easier to code.

Do you know if and how it would be possible to mod that ?
That's definitely something I'd like to try, but really out the range of my modding skills



Do you think it would it be possible to add a spell container "administrate" in which all potions are available IF you have some in your inventory ?
I tried something similar with special arrows but I never managed to add the "if you have it in your inventory"... So basically it gaves unlimited special ammunitions.

I guess adding a "unlock spell" in objects.txt won't work as everything about items seems to be managed in roottemplates.

Truth. Such a pity, because it is the difference between playing a game as a pastime and having a profound experience.

Which is completely fine to make a pastime fun game...just such a shame to use the Baldur's Gate name for such a game. Would of loved something more immersive/profound.
Then again especially for younger audiences?? When compared to recent modern stuff BG3 is immersive and profound I guess....

One thing Larian does incredibly well are silly fun games with addicting game-play.

Some cheesy and obscure features being the barrier between a "pastime" and "a profound experience" is a bit of an over reaction.

Honestly? I watched some baldurs gate (1) gameplay a bit ago. Wolfheart was doing a half party kill -- true resurrection loop. Unlike most of Bg3 annoying features, this did not seem avoidable?? Is he just bad at it? I don't know...

The shame with Larian's inventions in beta is that they all have potential. The implementation is just bad.

Greater mobility in combat?
Sure. Power up spells that restrict movement and find a decent scaling.

Not having to strictly rely on a healer, when you only have 4 slots?
Awesome. Now let's balance that feature and make sure it works as intended.

Clutter absolutely everywhere?
What an alive world. Now make the inventory management a plus.

Bonus action stealth for everyone?
A Choice, but the right system will account for ability and enemy memory.

Special ammunition and combos?
Let's think very carefully about the consequences. It sure could help out some weaker classes!

Tavs reacting with easible perceiveable body language?
I guess. Let's add presets to avoid extreme OOC.

I know this is not the full game, but currently, it feels like they're adding features just to /have them/. Nevermind making it /work/. It's not the end of the world. But, it makes the game feel like that horse meme. One half the most realistic, A+ artistry, the other a stick-animal. It's jarring. To a point where they might want to drop what just doesn't fit in.

This is the standard way to implement features in the video game industry, we just usually don't get to see it since games are rarely shown in such an early state. The issue I see is that Larian never hints that a feature isn't final. It would mean so much to the community to hear a "we are working on it" instead of getting crazy by the speculation.

I'd certainly be more excited if they showed off finished mechanics, rather than the villains!

Headcanon:

Using a potion as the user costs an action.
Throwing the potion costs an action.

I imagine I'm using an action to jam a potion into a party member's gullet at a distance.