Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Difficulty way too high for story and balanced

I was going for a game where I could have challenging combat without too much combat optimization and reloading over and over for the same combat so I naturally chose the balanced mode. Turns out that after act 1 combat became way too hard for me, so had to switch to story mode in order to be able to get through the game sometime in this century! In one fight the enemy downs my mage before I have a chance to do anything! Yeah, I know I could avoid that if I had counterspell, but well I didn't at the time. Shouldn't story mode be easy combat and normal mode a challenging but balanced experience?

I know that some of you prefer the difficulty level to be way harder than I do, but maybe keep that on tactical mode and if that is not satisfying add an 'ironman' mode or something? While playing on story mode works for me it still annoys me that I need hit points adjustment and whatever in order to just be able to make it through the fights. Many fights I end up using almost every spell slot and avery hit point I've got, which is ok for 'balanced' mode but not for story mode.

Feel free to comment but please do not start questioning my play style or make it about whether or not I am doing things wrong, because my very point is that on the balanced and story mode there should be room for mistakes and sub-optimal play. Have to say this in advance because of previous experience in chat.

is it a problem with difficulty or unoptimized battle tactics? Most fights offer ways to reduce their difficulty via non-combat interactions.

Burst damage is a problem in BG3. Sarth Baretha proves that early on very nicely when she effortlessly one-shots a party member before you even get a turn. Usually difficult combat involves getting party members downed in focus fire before you can act. Or enemies spamming Fireball.

Even so, Larian have only increased everyone's damage output from 5e. Weapons very often have extra elemental damage. Rings add extra damage to attacks. Enemies have all kinds of super powerful multi-attack abilities they can roflstomp you with. Haste gives you extra two attacks instead of just one. Action Surge, Smites and Frenzied Attack were already horrifying in their damage output without Larian's help.

All of this just promotes meta-gaming the encounters and being the first one to get the damage burst in. And it seems like some encounters have been balanced around the fact that players SHOULD metagame them, instead of RP the situations and start the fights in a way that makes narrative sense.

For more fun combat, they should slightly reduce the damage output of both players and enemies. And stop giving all melee enemies jump and teleport abilities to get to the Wizard. Perhaps slightly increase (+1) Armor Classes through gear. As a rule of thumb, every PC should always get at least one turn to be able to react and defend themselves. Always. Except if you're being very careless of course.

Act 2 balanced game play, out side of normal encounters IMO was berserk lol, at one point I counted 18 vs 4. No matter who I led into battle, they would always get skipped or put at the back of the combat order, so by the time the first round was over most my team is hanging on by a thread, This is coming from a guy who loves Darksouls 3 and Elden ring , im kind of sick like that lol

but yea I think IMO toning down balanced on the big fights wouldn't hurt.

Explorer/story difficulty should be easy. It should not matter if your tactics or build are not optimal.

I can see how people that want a narrative experience would get very frustrated. Some of the battles you're way out numbered, and the +2 really isn't going to make that much of a difference when 10 enemies are hitting you with aoe.

I think the issue us it's balanced around larian dis style jf cheese like barrelmancy. Lol Or bom throwing or the super elemental arrows. Nkt to mention constant resting. I'm level.3 hsjf why to 4. I've only full rested once. I'm not a fan of spam resting. I know. I'm making it more challenging on myself but i refuse to spam barrelmancing, spam resting, or spam elemental puddles. Way too cheesy and so against the spirit of dnd. Lol

I've seen videos of people dragging a dozen of barrels across the screen blowing up enemies and bragging how 'easy' it us. Or resting every fight. Or knocking boss enemies off cliffs like it's exiting or original or cool. It's boring.

But, that's okay. I'll win anyways, without the cheese.

No idea about story mode but balanced is perfectly fine. Just take a look at your inventory and use the insane amount of very strong potions, poisons and bombs you can find all around the world.
I don't think it's realistic to expect 4 guys to defeat a small army without using at least a bit of ingenuity and tactic. You can thunderwave enemies off cliffs, chug down invisibility or haste potions, cast grease and shot a fire arrow on it to make it go boom and deal damage to groups of enemies...
Don't try to brute force through every single fight and use those little tadpoled brais of yours :P
Just got to act 3 by the way. Really enjoyed the challenge of some fights in act 2 so far and looking forward to what the city has in store.

The fights are OBVIOUSLY poorly balanced on "balanced" mode. You almost always fight a party larger in size than yours, and you almost always do so at some tactical disadvantage.

The enemy is ALWAYS perfectly prepared with ranged AOE attacks. The enemy is ALWAYS ready to shove you in to some pit or ocean (recently got tossed in the lake in Baldur's Gate. Instant death. What a fun pleasurable experience.)

Check out the following:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/building-combat-encounters

It talks about how enemy advantages and enemy party size affect the difficulty of the encounter and must be accounted for. They clearly skipped this step when they set the encounters up in Baldur's Gate 3.

I've only had one problem with combat so far & I wonder if I should of just came back.

Guy right after dialog ends jumps to one party member one hits him and jumps again and one shoots again. He was level 5 and used smite or some holy ability back to back. My party was still level three.

I actually skipped dialog to get the jump on him, doubt I could of done it after the convo.

I'd rather say that the game is very UNBALANCED.

Sometimes it's too easy, sometimes it's too hard.

And I sincerely think if the game changed the DND rules less, it would have been more balanced.

I personally feel the game is slightly too easy on balanced so I go back and forth with tactician.

I d recommend you go to YouTube and watch the combat tips video from wolfheartRPG.

My wife is not a hardcore DND player and it helps her understand better the mechanics.

If you simply get your party of 4 together and play as a group you should survive all encounters without any issue and you can short rest after. Then long rest every two or three fights.

I didn't try Story mode or normal, but I'm by the end of act 2 in Tactician and the only fights where I struggled a bit were the ones where I went in without resources. Everything else perfectly manageable.

Which makes me more than just a bit skeptic about the claim the other two options would be "too hard".

I found quite a few encounters horribly overtuned, especially in the enemy behavior. You can't position your group, but the enemy always can, resulting in your hanging in a cluster in the middle while being surrounded by enemies, especially if the fight was intiated by a conversation. In some cases all the enemies aren't even visible before the encounter . To add insult to injury, they then for the most part have the better initiative. And Not only that, they are better than perfect.

In one of my latest encounters, the enemy positioned themselves in the floor above me in an almost perfect semicircle. Jumping upwards wasn't working (either to far away or not enough space), trying to rush them just got me killed, so I went into cover under the ceiling to lure them down.

If I didn't position my group absolutely perfect, the mobs immediately went to the one place where they could get LOS through a break or a hole in the ceiling and use ranged weapons on the character that was visible from that specific position, even though from the position they were in originally they couldn't see the group. I like clever enemy behavior, but that is not clever, that is cheating.

There are other fights that are truly difficult if you don't know how this plays out beforehand, especially if there are multiple fights after another in areas where you can't rest. And story mode doesn't change that, instead it just seems to tone down the health of the enemies a bit.

I really like BG3, but the fights sometimes really leave me frustrated. If your group goes down simply because you have no choice *how* to pick the fight and are unlucky on the initiative, it doesn't really enhance the gaming experience.

I have chosen the Tactician difficulty, because I like being challenged, and at times I still find the game too easy (and I started with nary a clue about how to play, I figured out you can jump halfway through act 1). But several fights provided nice, solid challenge and it keeps me hooked. I like that I had to use some items at my disposal, some positioning. I hope those difficult battles keep popping up (obviously not every single one should be that, respite is needed and nice).

That being said... if the easiest mode/story difficulty gives people problems, it should be nerfed. It's literally there to allow people who *don't* want to think in combat to be able to play and enjoy the game, isn't it?

I remember playing games when I was younger and a complete n00b, I didn't know the value of CC ("it does no damage, useless"), I didn't think of positioning ("they go together in a formation then okay, they stay that way"), I always kept my items "for later", barely noticed what gear did, etc. etc. etc. Some people just don't care to/can't get involved with the system and I think that's fine enough, let them have a mode where they hit half their team cause they thought they had to click on an enemy, and still win. For everyone else there's the balanced difficulty, which has to make sense and demand something from the player.

I played a game once where I just wanted to rush through the story. I picked the easiest difficulty to *not* be bothered about the systems. I didn't engage in crafting whatsoever, I put on whatever gear had a better main stat at a glance without a care in the world, and I just ignored everything else. And that was what I wanted from that game. That's fine too.

>>>>>>>>>>


tl;dr: If people for whom the difficulty is made think it's still too hard, it should be nerfed. It won't affect anyone else looking for a balanced or challenging gameplay.

I think more veteran players fail to realize that some players will simply use simple attacks, and cantrips for a lot of their playthrough. They won't use the huge variety of spells they have, they won't take advantage of surface effects, or build their character in any sort of proper way, they'll simply do what seems kind of fun, and get frustrated because of it. The difficult is fine for me, but I'm making a dedicated effort to learn and google outside tactics/builds/etc. if someone is simply using what the game shows them, without any previous crpg experience? They could have a very rough time.

Saying "I've played crpgs for 10,000 hours and it's fine for me, so I don't understand what people are saying" is laughable. That's like a professional football quarterback not understanding why people can't throw a spiral.

Hello everyone. I just joint the forum. I was a silent reader while playing early access. Now with the full version out I feel it's time to contribute to the discussions with my own thoughts on the topics. So far also playing Tactician Act 2 and have the same feeling as Tuco here. I think the game isn't that hard. Yes one or the other time I got surprised, had to rethink which abilities I had to use or worst case try to retreat. But altogehter I think all the fights are quite managable so far and nothing where I ever had the feeling I can't pull it of with the group constellation or have to use barrels to blow them up into oblivion.

For better understanding: My mc is a half-orc ranger with scitmar and bow, a bountyhunter background so he isn't neither a goody or bady mor one the neutral chaotic part, leaning to good. Party members I change regulary so the group is never the same and also try out different teamplay. I'm no min/max so decisions and gear are RP first quality second. I use long breaks only after a decent adventure forcing myself to use my short breaks, items and abilities wisely and not going full out on every encounter.

No I didn't first try every encounter and sometimes it took a little longer to overcome them but nothing so frustrating that I said this isn't possible without cheesing my way through or completly change my my characters decision. Most of my unfortunate moments in battle were connected to an unlucky dice role which is the give or take of any tabletop based game.

As it's turn based you have plenty of time to think of your next steps and espacially when there is stuff like fireball you might take in consideration not always to clump your group together. Same with observation of the battlefield itself. There are many things even in RP a character would consider, taking walls for cover after an attack, taking the highground as ranged fighter, trying to seperate the enmies when outnumbered. Also throw an item for a surprise or even your comrade in arms. The game offers a lot there aside from cheese taktics to show off in videos.

Also compared to other crpgs the encounters are quite fair and on the easier side of these games. Think of the Pathfinder games where when you forget to take certain feats or weapons made out of certain material with you, you are completly screwed because sir Buffalot can't kill them at all. In Pillars of Eternity you could get yourself in pretty messy situation being outnumbered and handling it, hard work to not loose the overview even with a lot of pausing the game. BG2 shortly before you'll get near world ending abilities has some hard encounters to deal with. KotOR and DragonAge Origins based on similar gameplay mechanics offer you different choices in what sequence you progress the story, have fun unkowingly choosing the hard ones first.

In conclusion. It's hard for me to believe that Normal and espacially Story Mode could be that much of a problem even if they are new to the genre. Espacially on normal I have to ask, is it really the difficulty or the learning curve that poses a problem to the ones struggling here? How do you take on encounters? Do you try out different abilities or stick to the same? How often do you use items? I just want to get a better understanding.

There's a fight in the 3rd act that is 18 vs 4, and many of the enemies have more than twice the HP you do. There is no universe in which this is a "balanced" encounter. I'll be back in 3 hours after I've abused save/restore to win an impossible fight.

Idk, I thought BG3 is a really well balanced game, playing Act 2 on Tactition as Berserk with Karlach, Gale & Shadowheart. I've got a couple of tough fights, but been really defeated just once somewhere at the begining by mistake.
BG3 offers some ways to deal with hard encounters, other than just stand & hit till they die...I also love to keep multiple exlosive barrels in my tiny bag for a really hard encounters & throw some goblins over the mountains, makes life easier and much more fun.

Well, as soon as you mention difficulty your playstyle is obviously subject nr1. More precisely your party composition. It would be nice if you could share it. This will make the difficulty vary a lot for a specific encounter.
You mentioned you had fights where you used all your spell slots within a single fight and manage to loose it which is very surprising. Any fight where spell slots get spammed would automatically become won basically. Even in Act 2. So very surprised to hear that. Unless you just hapenned to pick up characters which make this statement invalid.

In my coop gameplay we play on normal so we can roleplay more freely, not always go for the most optimum choices etc. Sometimes we roll in face first without thinking cause "justice" and any npc screaming" hurry" means we actually hurry. We definitely make mistakes, even on purpose. And it still works thanks to the abundance of scrolls, potions etc.

I have custom Dark urge Paladin of vengence + Shadowheart in my party + Gale and Karlach. I have to recognise a huge chunk of the damage comes from Karlach + the paladin just obliterating everything they see and the fact they both dodge a lot of enemy attacks(Karlach struggles with it at first, but she can get a perk and items allowing her to get a respectable AC but that's a question of character build more than anything, so won't go into that).

We never had more than 1 reload per fight apart from two specific fights which we had to restart 2 times.


Based on my spoiler example I would say some party builds might end up getting you into trouble in some very specific fights especially if you're not familliar with D&D. I'm having troubles to think of a party composition leading to me going on story mode instead of normal but I'm sure they exist( Any party not having some form of a melee specialist with double action from level 5 onwards will struggle in Act 2 to be honest). I'm assuming that's what might have hapenned in your case. Which on one hand is a shame to have story choices impact combat so heavily but on the other you can respec your characters in camp at any time for 100 gold I believe.

So if you want to have a specific character but just need a warior or something like that this solves the issue.

While I understand what you are trying to convey my point is I didn't have those difficulties despite not having a try-hard approach at all( for now :P ) so it's more about the fact some classes types seem just necessary in a party if you want to have it the easy way. And not as much about the global balance of the game. Quite normal in a class -based system.

Good lucke out there !