Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Damage spells suck

As the title says, I find damage spells very underwhelming. Take something like scorching ray. When I cast it, it consistently does around ten total damage, between misses and bad rolls, magic missile is about the same at 2-4 damage a hit.
Firebolt on the other hand once I get the second damage die does the same or better. Which means my cantrips are as good or better than my actual spell slots, this seems poory thought out.

2nd example AOE spells, last night I cast divine intervention and it literally did ten damage(against the optional dragon boss) in other words a one handed mace attack does more damage than a God waffle stomping my enemies, that needs a serious rework.
But this is a recurring theme, enemies have 20 in every stat and always save even against gale wearing 5 piece of DC increasing gear so they always take half damage and the rolls are usually crap to begin with. Even blight I have never seen do over 30 damage.
In other words cantrips are the only damage spells worth casting. You should use your slots for holds, buffs and slow spells things like that. Am I the only one who feels this way?

It's not really a problem with the damage spells as it is more related to enemies having vastly inflated stats and HP and/or enemies often having special abilities they don't have in D&D. Had Larian implemented the 5E more closely, the game would be far better balanced.
As it stands I mostly use my spell slots for things like Counterspell, etc.

It is an oddity in 5e that cantrips grow in power whereas leveled spells don't. That said, before 11th level your 1st & 2nd level slots should still be more damaging than cantrips.
- A 2d10 Firebolt with a 70% chance to hit will deal an expected 7.7 points of damage.
- 3 Scorching Rays with 70% chance to hit will deal an expected 14.7 points of damage.
- 3 Magic Missiles with 100% chance to hit will deal an expected 10.5 points of damage.
However, I believe there's an item that allows you to adds your Int mod to cantrip damage..?? This would push cantrips beyond 1st level spells, and is probably an argument for it's modification or removal.

As @Kendaric says, Enemy stats (and thus Saving Throws) are buffed in BG3 and you can't benefit from high ground while using Saving Throw spells, so attack roll spells are better. However, there aren't many attack-roll damaging spells at higher level, so you're forced to rely on ST spells.

As for rolls, I'd be fairly surprised if there was different rng for cantrips vs non-cantrips. Like, I'm no fan of Larian's historical implementation of rng (Karmic or non-Karmic), but that'd be too far for even them. I suppose the rng on XdX damage could be coded such that the same number isrolled more often, but this would result in both extremely low and extremely high totals...

Scorching ray unfortunately turns out to be a junk spell, I find twinned ray of sickness with level 2 slots to do much more damage with a chance to poison too.

Level 3+ damage spells are actually good, but now that I've figured out about heightened hold person / twinned hold monster I like to use those much more.

Its not an oddity, because... they do, its called upcasting, using a higher level spell slot makes most damaging spells do more damage

I mean, previous editions had auto scaling leveled spells that didn't require using higher level slots. WotC made the explicit design choice to both power up cantrips and make them scale with character level, while *removing* scaling from leveled spells. This has the effect of making damaging 1st level spells ~useless at higher levels - relegating 1st level slots to mainly be used for Mage Armor and Shield.

If cantrips get more powerful because the wizard is getting better at their craft, more in tune with the weave, why doesn't this similarly buff all their spells? E.g., add level 5 you add one die to all spells you cast - cantrips and leveled?

When I played baldur's gate 1 I was really surprised to see how the same low level spell (magic missile) became stronger with level. I thought it was terrible design to have low level characters get it creating just 1 puny missile, while the assassin sent to kill me instantly generates 5 missiles, leaving Imoen on her own to somehow kill him and revive me.
I really liked the change in 5e where spells are only stronger when you upcast them, it makes the spells do what you can expect them to do, separating them from what your character level is.
Damage cantrips leveling up with you is also good imo, as cantrip damage is so incredibly low relative to enemies/other classes it's just a weak move designed not to leave casters completely helpless without spell-slots.
It's fine that low level slots are reserved for things that don't need scaling - fog clouds and greases and armor and shield spells scale with the effectiveness of the enemies power (if you make a stronger enemy miss, you saved yourself from more dmg). There is no need for all spell slots to directly translatable to damage.

There needs to be way more spell slots then

There was an old maxim about characters as they progressed. Linear fighters, quadratic wizards. Wizard spells increased in power at all levels while fighters just got flat power increases. Keeping spells flat in power unless upcast and reducing their spell slot progression was the way to make sure wizards weren't just better than fighters at everything while keeping general power more measured at the top end of the curve.

Hmmm I'm not sure that the (limited) scaling of leveled spells significantly counts toward the "quadratic" power progression. I'd say that mostly comes from the obtaining of new & more powerful spells, an increased number of spell slots per day, and the various metamagics. Would 5e wizards actually see an appreciable increase in power if all their 1st level spells did an additional die of damage at levels 5, 11, and 17? If they got another scorching ray at, idk, maybe level 7 or 11?

We also return to the main issue that, in 5e, cantrips are not "kept flat in power unless upcast". Eventually they even become better than 1st level spell slots, which is nonsensical. Why is something that doesn't cost a resource and is so simple to be "cast almost by rote" more powerful than something that takes a resource?

I'm kind of late to the party since I didnt notice your reply at an appropriate time. But I will say you're not wrong really. There's probably some level of balance that work better than what we have here. But this is going to be a moving target Chromatic Orb clearly gets overtaken, so it needs a buff to compete. But then Magic Missile needs a buff to match Chromatic Orb right? But then sure Sleep needs a buff? Which means Scorching Ray needs a buff? Doesn't that mean Fireball? Haste? Improved Invisibility?

It's easy for this to end up being a lot of buffs for a bunch of character classes that are often considered overpowered anyway. I think the issue is probably more that cantrips are too powerful as you level. Scaling cantrips probably shouldn't be a thing (High level Warlocks excepted) and rather full casters should get their baseline power increased in other ways.

Casters don't need buffs. Martials and consumables need nerfs. Too many extra attacks, venoms are broken, and so are speed potions. Martials also got like three to four times the item pool the other classes did, including like 5x the amount of legendary weapons.

Druids and rangers are the worst class, with bard after. Those could use a few touch ups, but in general bosses are dying too quickly because speed potions and venoms and multiclass extra attack perks are giving too much power creep to martials and some casters.

Lore Bards are hilariously overpowered. Take one and only two enemies in the entire game ever gets to do anything ever again. I'd say it takes two and a half wizards to compare to a lore bard in terms of power.

Otto's needs a nerf, I've said it elsewhere. The issue is that Ottos scrolls are available like candy by Act 3, so their unique brand of OP is easily replaced whereas a Fighter, Paladin, or Monk have no substitutes. Martials can do what casters can with scrolls because Larian for some reason allows them to benefit from scrolls on top of having all venoms, oils, and potions disproportionately benefit them. All a caster has to look forward to in an elixir is an extra spell slot, and a lv4 spell slot at best. It's so stupid how martial-favored this game is.

Bosses should have an innate that gives them strong DR to CC effects so you can't just stunlock them to death, and autocrit on paralysis needs to go.

Every single strategy in this game is drink a speed potion and burst a boss down in 1-2 turns with 4-6 autoattacks. Oh, and we put in a bunch of items that increase attack rolls and some gloves that set the STR to 23 in case it wasn't obvious we want your autoattacks which cost zero resources to hit for 50-70+ a piece and require no long rests to replenish.