Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Phase Spider Matriarch

1. This matriarch just shot 2 venom attacks in a single turn that did 40 damage and wiped out my entire party.

2. The phase spiders get their venom attack every single round. If you actually follow the rules upon which the game is based, there is an entry in the monster tables for ranged attacks like this that says "recharge." It's in there to prevent these creatures from getting their absurd special ranged attacks every single round.

Here's an example: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Giant%20Spider#content

These encounters are totally absurd and it's not the mark of a good game that you have to cheat and use foreknowledge to win every encounter. Please stick to the rules and create creature encounters that aren't ridiculous.

Also, if you're going to have totally rediculous encounters like this, you need a PROPORTIONATE REWARD. There is nothing of value in this entire dungeon. If you're going to make a level 3 party fight a boss with 125hp that can wipe your entire group out in 1 round, and has potentially 15 or so allies, you should offer a big, proportionate reward. This is DM'ing 101.

+1. I just destroyed the eggs and chain knocked it of the webs into the giant pit of death. If you fight it properly or don't exploit fall damage it's unwinnable. Welcome to dos3. Larian do not know now to balance fights, it gets way worse in act 2, 3

I like it as it is, there is a high value reward, but even if there wasn't it'd be good, it's optional, out of the way and clearly signaled that it will be dangerous.
If it wasn't as strong it wouldn't be an achievement to beat which is, optional boss rule #1
You don't need to exploit or even use mechanics, it's not unwinnable it's just hard and again, entirely optional.

I assume the intention of her isn't to fight but sneak around to get the spoiler and out again, but having it there as an optional very hard fight is great. Not everything needs to be levelled to the player in PnP or video games.

The unfortunate reality is that the game so poorly balanced, it is difficult to judge if an encounter is difficult or not. Between fall damage, bard crowd control and ridiculous throw damage the beast didn’t last two rounds and didn’t get to do a single action. It is cheesing? Or is not using Larian’s cheese not playing well?

My take so far, is that BG3 is incapable of providing enjoyable challenge. Most encounters on normal and easy and dull, some are tedious, and when game dares to be challenging it usually resorts to cheap bullshit.

My favourite example so far was bullette - who instakilled/pushed to death 3/4 full health party members jumping out (and I spread the party beforehand to what seemed like a reasonable space) only to get killed in two turns without any issues or damage by remaining Karlach.

I don’t think core systems are well put together - and the downside of exploitable cheese is that it stops being amusing after the first or 2nd time you use it.

At least they cut a lot of cheese from enemy AI - so gimping myself is an option. Still not super happy with how it plays.

There are a lot of fights, IMO, in Act 1 that if you go in blind are very tough. This is one of them mostly because it's easy to stumble into at L2/3. This fight absolutely gets easier as you master the game's mechanics and streamline your approach to Act 1 content.

I very much enjoy yeeting this boss into the phantom zone with the knock back version of Eldritch Blast. I toss a fire bomb onto some eggs with everyone hidden, she comes to investigate and is going to be close to the edge of something just by the nature of the landscape. Just need to land 1 EB and she is gonna get knocked for a bunch of prone damage or killed outright by going into the chasm. If you don't have a Warlock (which you should, at least in camp) you can get the same mechanic working for you by attacking the web bridges while enemies are standing on them that only have 4 HP even on Tactician. You miss a shitty green +poison robe this way, who cares.

All that said, you can largely control when you do the toughest fights and you can save this until you are level 5+ at which point you should be able to just face tank this encounter and it will be easy. I think I was level 4 when I did it the most recent time.

You can get to L7 by the end of Act 1 if you do literally everything. None of the tough fights are tough there at L7 and every one of them is very doable at L5.

'Not a very good reward'.

Poison Dragon Sorc disagrees, best reward in game.

Git gud maybe and learn how to kill the spider.

To be fair, I did this encounter at level 3. It is right on the way to the goblins, and if your exploring the act 1 goblin town there is a really high chance your finding this enemy. Optional or not, if your playing the game, you do not know what is optional vs what is not. As someone who played EA I know it's optional.... but someone who did not would NOT. As it leads to the underdark. Someone with slow fall can supposedly jump down the pit into act 2

Personally, I do enjoy there being some fights - this and Grym being examples - where our party is basically outmatched but can win by "clever" use of the environment (by which of course I mean, use of the environment that the designers have put there so we can use it to win otherwise extremely difficult encounters). While these fights are winnable more conventionally, especially if we're overlevelled, they are intended to be puzzles as much as fights and I'm okay with that. In moderation.

The problem is that those fights aren't used in moderation, not even remotely. I literally hate all boss fights in BG3 (optional or otherwise) as they feel extremely gamey and not really like D&D fights at all.
I had a similar dislike for the D:OS boss fights though.

Playing EA and knowing about the robe already is exactly why I made a poison sorc. But I have to pick between poison robe or +1 DC robe ... I wish the poison robe also added +1 DC given how hard the boss is.

Outside of a handful of instances where your party gets surprised, most fights can be avoided if you're being even remotely careful. Examine the enemies before engaging and if they are out of your league, you know to retreat and come back when you've gotten another level or 2 under your belt.

Larian nor anyone "made" anyone fight the Phase Spider Matriarch. You CHOOSE to. Its optional 100 percent. Complaining about an Optional fight being too difficult is silly as you can come back to it at higher level or you can just not fight it at all.

And btw some people consider a challenging fight and the experience your characters get as plenty reward. Not to mention you get plenty of things worth gold and if you have a poison user a great poison item and a spoiler item is in there. So.....there is quite a bit of reward in there even if it didn't fill your reward bowl how you like it.

Also if you are level 3 and have Karlach as Wild Heart with Bear totem then.....there is no way you get wiped. Plus if you keep people spread out they can't all get hit at the same time. If you play a challenging fight poorly you will get wiped. Welcome to tactical turn based RPG combat, and fans of the genre wouldn't have it any other way. You can split the party up before initiating the fight even to avoid it even being a remote possibility. Please don't act like the game is bad or in the wrong just because a fight goes poorly when you aren't playing tactically. Think tactically and use your environment to your advantage. A simple mobile flourish as a bard will send the matriarch flying into the abyss. A firebolt or acid attack on the web bridge will break it causing creatures on it to take fall damage and go prone. Lots you can do here.

Honestly, I think my main beef with the fight is that the intended 'clever' way doesn't make much sense to me thematically. Firstly, while I am not an expert on the physiology of giant spiders, I expect with 8 fairly flexible legs it should be able to absorb falls pretty well and not take as much damage as it does. Secondly, it's a phase spider - it could simply phase/teleport while falling.

As for separating characters, that's obviously a good strat here. I just wish that the BG 3 'chain' group mechanics didn't make it so tedious by having to switch it off and on all the time.

Okay that ... is a fair point

At least about the phasing. I also am not an expert on spiders (of any size) but I suspect that one the size of the matriarch would be impossible in normal gravity anyway, so all bets are off as to how it would absorb falls as we're working according to the laws of high fantasy rather than physics already!

Poison robe, poison gloves, poison cloak, poison dragon sorc, spam cloudkill, also twinned ray of sickness.

Cloudkill now also poisons enemies, +1d4 damage to each thing hit, and each enemy poisoned heals you 1d4.

Maybe I'll find more poison gear in Act 3.

Its just a shame how much stuff resists poison, wish poison was an option in the resistance bypass feat.

You are taking toxic masculinity to a new level.

at the risk of making a potentially unhelpful comment...

i really don't find the fight that hard.

in fairness, i built up about 2000 hours in early access and have quite a bit now in full release, so maybe i'm not the best judge.

Im not poisonous enough yet, need poison immunity bypass, just realized elemental adept feat wouldn't actually work for immunity.

Larian please, add poison boots - the wearer treats poison immunity as poison resistant.

At least let my cloudkill work

Fire sorc spam fireball boring sorc.

Fighting a spider matriarch should be a tough fight. All fights in DND games are optional to a greater or lesser degree. If you save often you have several things you can try:
Come back when you have gained a level.
Come back when you have better gear.
Come back when you have re-jigged your spellbook to deal with this type of enemy.
Drop the game difficulty for this particular fight.
Look on YT for vids showing how to do this fight.

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When was the last time you saw a spider fall? Breaking the web bridges is pure Larian cheese.

My main problems with the fight came from the camera. In my first attempt of this play I was getting hammered by poison being spit and the phase spiders were phasing out to who knows where because the combination of narrow spaces and 'verticality' completely screwed the camera. I ended up reloading before I was actually party-wiped and came back a day or two later, made sure the height difference between the party and the spiders wasn't as great and did the fight in a few minutes with minimum fuss.

There's been a couple of fights where verticality + camera has caused more problems than the enemy.