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

I think part of the problem is if you're not a veteran, and don't really know the 'good' spells, and didn't even realize what some things do (I never realized how insane haste was until Act 3 lol), combined with what you mentioned about having to anticipate fights, combined with some fights almost seeming like puzzles where you're meant to solve it instead of just a normal fight, I can easily see how people can be having difficulties.

you're right, some fights have like 10 enemies, and they're not shy about singling out your party members, so you could be down a quarter of your team before you even take a single action. I had a fight where enemies were casting confusion constantly, and I didn't really understand what it was doing, or how to counter it, and so had to solve that with a reload or two. There are so many different mechanics that if you going into this game without DND knowledge or CRPG experience, it can be a ROUGH time.

I don't think the game is difficult, there are only a few fight I ever felt I could lose in the game.
My only complaint is the dps is out of hand, both the player and most enemies are capable of being killed outright in a single turn via smite or 6 attack per round barbarians. The game is really incentives you to kill quickly as most boss fights are decided by who gets the first turn.
I would like to see damage reduction or health increases across the board.

Which fight? Every fight I played that outnumbered was against trash mobs, I feel like you are exaggerating

I'm seeing a lot of "if you have Haste"; "Haste is the key" type posts. Surely if success or failure is dependant upon one Spell, then the balance is wrong. If you are forced down a specific route in order to "win", then you're no longer role playing.

Personally, I've had no real difficulty with combat on balanced until Act 3. Once in Baldur's Gate, almost every serious encounter ends with me having my A**e handed to me. The only exception to this was . My party are all Level 11, but all seem to be seriously weak against multiple enemies than seem to have 3 or 4 actions to my 2 (not using Haste).

I get really curious about seeing how those that say it's too hard play. Like, do they not use spells, or not look at hit chances, or... what? There's not that many options. Do they just walk straight into every single ambush and never buy gear? Not to sound elitist, I'd just really like to see some bad play because I'm genuinely wondering how this game is hard on balanced. What are they doing? Forget that Stealth and bows exist? Stands in fire? It's... it's very few mechanics!

While I haven't had any problems myself so far, I do think some fights are overtuned.

Especially for players like myself who won't min/max and refuse to play with Larian's cheesy homebrew (Haste, overpowered items, everyone can use scrolls, shove spam, etc) and prefer style over substance the game is certainly not super easy on balanced (and Explorer is not an option for me due to some of the modifiers that are applied). I usually get around the issue by having mods to increase party size and to remove many of the Larianisms and make the game more like 5e.
I'm not complaining though, I knew what was I getting into.

Giving us more granular difficulty options would have been the best approach, but Larian has unfortunately not done this.

And I get curious about seeing those saying it is easy on tactician play. I play on normal, as I do with every game, and I find combat neither too easy nor too difficult but I have been playing RPGs for 25 years. I use mods to make things more in line with 5e, I rarely if ever use haste or 'until long rest buffs', I don't really bother with any buffs unless I'm obviously struggling in a particular.
I'm in Act 2 and my party is bard, Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Karlach. Shadowheart has been the main magic user with the bard mostly working a xbow. I don't have to keep running back for a long rest or running around trying to buy potions or scrolls. None of this makes me a real man or a badass - it's just the way I like to role play.

I watch lots of YT vids and some of the 'Tactician Mode'/'Hardest Difficulty' players are really good; some are hopeless and some cheat.

SurrealBeliefs cheats

He is always chopping and changing his party and he's respecced a few times and it just so happens that the party composition is just what is need for that next big fight. Same story with him continually swapping out spells and that potion he just happens to find in his inventory.

Heliax Gaming shouldn't be playing on Tactician - he takes a pounding in even the most average fight. He's respecced Lae'zel to ranger for some reason and the gear his party are using isn't great.


Mortismal is good but I don't like the way he plays.

Few of the Tactician crowd ever say how many attempts it took to win a fight. Fights are a hell of a lot easier even the second time around on any difficulty.

My own experience led me to see that the game balance on Balanced Mode is generally good in Acts I and II, but Act III tends to either be too easy or a knock-down, drag-out fight and it would be nice to see something in-between.

I think the balance tends to favor specific party make-ups (in fairness, so does the D&D system of combat). In general, I would think the difficulties would follow the following idea:

Story Difficulty - Should be able to get through almost every fight with a suboptimal party without having to reload.
Balanced Difficulty - May need a generally balanced party to get through fights, and major fights may require some strategy to avoid reloading.
Tactician Difficulty - Will need a fairly optimized party to get through this without reloading. Major fights will require strategy, and may require reloading even still.
Challenge Difficulty - Every fight may require optimization, and major fights require significant strategy to present a challenge.

There isn't a "Challenge Difficulty" at the moment, but it sounds like there are some who would want such a thing. So if we go by those definitions, I think Story Mode could be generally set slightly easier than what it is, combats in Act 3 could be rebalanced slightly for more consistency on Balanced Mode, and I don't really have much to say on Tactician and beyond.

Last mini boss, act 2 tower, half orc lady(vague on purpose), i had a hard time with. On balanced I couldn't do it. Soon as that paladin came out, dead. Between smites and grits, plus high initiative, I just get wrecked.

Try Lorespire. I've been enjoying his tactician playthroughs.

Yeah, that fight is annoying as hell. I manadged on my second try on balanced mode, but that was mostly owed to me getting initiative than anything else. Well, and getting lucky with the saving throws both mine and the ones made by enemies.
But the first time ... was horrible.

She is easy on a well balanced comp. Bring at least one caster for counterspell, and have enough AoE. Most people I see playing are not using any scrolls at all. A single ice storm and all of those mobs were knocked prone. You can also preload summons before going into the fight, or your martials can use void bulbs to suck in the enemies into a single spot and cleave them down.

I was running a suboptimal party comp of two moon druids with a wizard and cleric, and still not a single ally died.

By the way, with her assault, if you saved the Hyenas and severed their connection to the halfling cultist, and convince them you are a friend, they will join you for that fight.

I can't understand the complaints about this being too hard. Many of us are calling out for increased difficulty rather than the inverse. I realise I'm somewhat of a 'dinosaur', having grown up playing games that were on cassettes and took 20-30 mins to load up but modern games do way too much hand-holding and 'guiding' the player. I'm very thankful for all the freedom this game offers and the multitude of ways you can approach (most) encounters. The only really limiting factor (outside of certain boss or story scripted fights) is your imagination.

I just can't imagine playing this on 'easy' and complaining that it's too difficult. I know it's a hard-line stance but maybe, just maybe, if a free-form game that rewards using creativity and imagination to tackle obstacles is too much... well, perhaps this type of game isn't for you - YET. Maybe playing similar games that do more to hold your hand, whilst slowly teaching you how to better approach this style of game would be of benefit? It's another 'hot-take' but it's not the game that's at fault here. You don't have to know the D&D rules well, you don't have to be an expert in crpg's, you just have to be willing and able to switch your brain into creative mode (something that many modern games sadly seldom require).

[Edit] Thought it worthy of note that I use mods to make the game closer to 5e rules (no being able to cast two spells each turn (Action/Bonus Action) nonsense for example and other things that just turn down the video game cheese).

Between the complaints about the game being too hard and other complaints about the game being too easy, I'm convinced the distribution of player capabilities are probably a bell curve, and that the people on the extremes of the bell curve just happen to be vocal about it.

I do think it leans a bit toward the easy side. Specifically, I notice a lot of streamers who talk about how they must've stumbled across a strong build, or how they have a strong group. I think the game is somewhat designed to give the player that impression.

It was harder in the early days of early access. I can still remember Felicia Day playing early access and stumbling through the cave passage into the back of the grove. The statues continuously shot her, and no matter how much her chat insisted she should sneak or try to take out the statues from range, she just kept dying. You could see her frustration trying to figure out what to do.

I think companies prefer when streamers have a good time showcasing the game, and thus the game has to be easy enough for some of them to enjoy, otherwise it doesn't come across as inviting.

*

All I really want is something like tactician only with an ironman mode, including permadeath and no revivify scrolls/spell and no assistance from Withers. And a lot less food.

Along with an achievement named after me, of course.

Actually, reading some of this, I wonder to what degree karmic dice is responsible and whether it's having some unintended effects on difficulty. For example some of the complains seem bizarre to me: I basically never encountered cases where my beefier characters were dps'd down in the first turn before they could do anything. But then again, I played with karmic dice off.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what karmic dice does is prevent 'failure streaks', right? When you have consecutive low rolls, it increases the chance that you will have a high roll. It is considered "fair" because it applies to both your rolls and the enemy's rolls.

I've pointed out before how this may actually be an inherent buff to martials (who are often rolling against an enemy's AC) and an inherent nerf to casters (where enemies are often rolling against a spellcaster's DC) because it gives an advantage to *whoever is actually making a roll.*

But could this also be making ambushes more deadly? In ambushes - or any combat where a bunch of enemies get to go before you do - you are already at a disadvantage. But karmic dice actually makes it even MORE of a disadvantage, because to prevent a "failure streak" for the enemy, it ensures some of their rolls will be successful. Without karmic dice, you might have five weak enemies swarm your tank, but all of them miss because your tank has high AC. WITH karmic dice, it would actually change some of those misses into hits, causing them to burst your tank down.

It prevents streaks of any kind.
However, it has several huge issues:
1. By all the research done so far, it tracks success/fail, not high/low result. That means there is no difference between AC15 and AC20, as a few misses against AC20 result in the rolls getting "helped" into hitting AC20. If the enemy has an AC of 12, and you hit too much, you'll start rolling a few 1s and 2s, to keep it straight.
2. It really does not work with Advantage/Disadvantage, because it is "heavier" than it; Karmic rolls with advantage/disadvantage have a very pronounced tendency to roll "in the same vicinity". This means that you'll get a lot of, say, 17&19 or 4&7, but not as many 3&15, for example.
3. Combining the two above points, it can be gamed easily by using summons: conjure woodland creatures, animate dead, elementals; those spells can give your side creatures that are easy to hit, and don't find it easy to hit. This does more than just "soak hits" and "chip away"; think of them as "priming" your dice.

I've played CRPGS for 35 years, and the only games I've had trouble finishing because of difficulty were DOS1 & 2. Never finished DOS2, as a difficulty spike basically killed my interest to continue.
The difficulty spikes were horrendous. I don't play CRPGS for strategy, I play them for the story and the ROLEplaying.

And yes, I used to play actual strategy games for fun.
Disappointed, if this is again a problem with BG3, together with bad quest journal.