Larian Studios

I have experience in conditional programming, I certainly wouldn't volunteer to do it. And sure, you can call it an excuse, but I disagree with them throwing off the balance of the game because that implies it was a balanced product before they got their hands on it, when it wasn't. For example - bounded accuracy is a thing; but then let's throw in +3 swords! We have narrow number ranges; let's have Pass Without a Trace what, give advantage? Nah, let's make it a flat +10 bonus! Hey, we want weapons to be based on flavor and folks to use that which they want rather than getting into the nitty gritty of a falchion vs a scimitar. Let's have a feat though which gives an insanely massive +10 damage bonus though, and tie it to one specific class of weapons! I could go on and on of course, the point is, while Larian's decision on Haste certainly didn't help, let's not pretend like 5e would have been perfectly balanced if only it were more faithfully implemented.


Eh there's plenty of + damage items in 5e, bracers of archery are a straight lift, weapons give 4d4 damage (basically +10), the strength setting stuff? At least they don't have 5e's one setting it to 29! And so forth. Hard disagreeon it being "3x as strong as 5E"

Agree to disagree, has not been my experience, multiple fights have been trivialized by a web, much less hold person or hypnotic pattern. Confusion is like that in 5E too, it sucks. The things that are *actually* bad are for example battlemaster maneuvers that need a hit *and* a failed save; and the things that are best require neither, like Spike growth. 'Attack roll vs DC' is too context driven to be able to make a blanket generalization in either direction in my experience and in my opinion.

There can be and are reasons not to in BG3 as well; arguably more than 5e since you can't survival instead of spending rations. Timed quests? Yep BG3 has them. Areas too dangerous to rest? Yep it has those too. But in Tabletop try running every single quest as timed, or even the majority. You'll lose interest and players quickly, speaking from experience as player and DM alike. The issue with long rest spamming is 5E's unrealistic expectation of number of encounters and encounter pacing, I've *never* been in a campaign in D&D where the encounters actually match DMG expectations in number per day, in double digit adventures and campaigns run by half a dozen+ different people. BG3's resting mechanic, while handwavey, is actually extraordinarily well done for a computer game and is not more lenient than traditional tabletop.

Right but all Wizards are viable, so even if some options are more powerful than others, *none* of them result in a character which is just largely unimpactful and unenjoyable. Beastmaster Hunter in BG3 folks may argue 'feels unimpressive', but in base 5E it's an outright trap that in many ways is worse than no subclass at all, to say nothing of just buying a pet and taming and training it as literally any other class. What's the difference between a Druid with a tamed bear friend and a Ranger with one? The Ranger doesn't have to justify the training, and also, he spends his own actions to make the bear move. Yeah.... Is that a worse power disparity between say Divination Wizard and Beastmaster Ranger in 5E than it is in BG3, or than the disparity between Divination Wizard and Illusionist Wizard in BG3? In my opinion absolutely it is.



I do Or to be able to run around sanctuaried and plop down explosive barrels, or to be able to steal their weapons before we fight so they're left bare handed, or to be able to talk their leader into fighting against them, and so on and so forth. I like options, this is just one part of why I think the idea you're forced into raw damage is not even remotely true, at least not in my experience. Don't have a chasm? Create your own hazardous terrain, keep on shoving around enemies, it's a grand time. Just my opinion of course.

Thanks for the detailed replies, very enlightening.

Specifically about terrain and "enhanced leap + feather fall + longstrider" , what i mean is that when my character can jump 20+ meters even up fortress walls or even further when on high ground it just nullifies any obstacle.

That archer or mage that is hiding up high behind something is going to get a visit from my barbarian who is jumping from almost 30 meters in an upwards angle, as if she has literal Flying.

That combo of ritual spells just makes it like every character has a longer range "Misty Step" but costs only a bonus action, no cooldown & no cap/limit.

I find it hilarious but i actually had to impose a rule on myself not to use this combo because it just trivializes any kind of terrain obstacles, even vertical ones.

People who think spike growth is good haven't seen AI or the player trivially jump out of it or a Hunger of Haddar or Darkness. The idea that terrain matters is a joke when 80% of the boots by Act 2 and Act 3 give immunity to difficult terrain and some outright immunity to being ensnared/enwebbed.

And a Hold Person is a joke, wasting a spell slot and concentration on something you can achieve with a Crawler Venom or Drow Poison. Both grant more reliable, less costly CC and autocrit. On spammable consumables.

You're right, I haven't commonly seen that. Instead, far more commonly, I've seen entire groups of enemies walk through it instead of around it, wiping themselves out without even needing to touch them. And in the few cases they haven't, having it there has effectively given those without a bonus action attack the option to shove to deal damage and finish them off. If you think Spike Growth is anything less than exceptional, you are either a) not using it at all, or b) not using it correctly, as difficult as that is to do.

And Dow Poison, which requires a hit *and* a failed save, being more reliable than Hold Person, which just requires a failed save?! That's mathematically impossible. And Hold Person also grants autocrit. And Drow Poison has a relatively low save DC. And it just inflicts sleep, which goes away after a single attack, instead of giving you 2 full rounds of all party members having auto crit. Have you never used hold person?

No, because I paralyze with crawler and carabazan grenade/venoms instead of wasting my turn and action on a CC spell that can fail and use a far more limited spell slot instead of casting a chain lightning or fireball.

Yes, I was being serious. Admittedly, I have played the game only once, but I did not get the impression I would be overpowered if I had made other choices.

I just found this analysis of balance in Disco Elysium versus traditional RPG games. It is worth a read. It even has two diagrams to show the unique balancing system of Disco Elysium.

Interesting read, but Disco Elysium is a bad example - "balance" is mostly (this thread as well) used in context of power in combat.

But Disco Elysium is not a balanced game as well. Some skills (hand-eye coordination, authority, calculus) are vastly superior to others, if you wanna have generally positive outcomes in quests and story. Other skills are interesting too, but not as "satisfying".

Even MMOs, where "balance" is the most important, do not have it. Take WoW as an example - certain specs always pull ahead in their respective roles. And the more "balanced" WoW became over the years, the less fun it turned out to be.

As for single player games, balance is not needed. What is needed is diversity of playstyles.

This discussion is happening on every platform discussing BG3. The game's highest difficulty is insanely easy compared to other games in the genre. You honestly don't need to balance it, other than fixing the clearly bugged things like Tavern Brawler and Blade pact Extra Attack stacking, lightning charges (I could go on). Instead, add more difficulty options and address the AI having no idea how to deal with spells like Darkness (currently they'll often just stand there and let you shoot them).

Hey I made a response thread to split this off so as to not derail this discussion. Suffice to say I ran the numbers, and no, using venoms instead of hold person is not more reliable, and focusing on casting lightning instead of hold person does not result in higher damage output.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=898836#Post898836

For the response thread. Fair warning it may make folks eyes bleed depending on how much they do or do not love number crunching.

Part of me is in awe of how thorough your analysis is. Sincerely, Bravo. But part of me wants a game in which no numbers are exposed and players have to exist in something closer to real world where such numerical precision is impossible and they're stuck with having to make somewhat superstitious guesses about hit probabilities and damage outputs.

OP doesn't matter in a single player game. Larian made a game you can play pretty much however you want. It's your game, so you do you. If you don't like some of the stuff they allow you to do, don't do it. If some of what you call op wasn't in the game, it would be too difficult for me to play.

Honestly, some of the combos are rather silly. And there are also other things that throw off balance, like people using camp followers to keep certain buffs on themselves. And there are way too many potions available, that last too long, and I'd say they cost too little, but that doesn't matter, because there are also a variety of ways to easily steal them. When people play str based characters with an 8 or 10 str, because of the potions... yeah. But hey, you abuse those things, or you don't.

Personally, I don't. I don't want to spend half an hour prepping or going back and forth to the camp, when I can just spend that time playing the game instead. But if others have fun spending the time prepping, and then ending the fight in one round, well, that's cool, too. We're all having fun.

Yes you are right about almost everything.
But with a simple lvl 2 spell no magic item it's possible to beat the game so it's not so easy. The problem is the difficulty the lack of AI the lack of enemy AC and saving throws. And the biggest issue enemy's don't have abilities and spells.

For the last point, this Mod may help, which "adds various spells and abilities to enemies. Mages will have more spells to choose from, fighters and barbarians will have more abilities such as fighters having Great Weapon Training and barbarians having Frenzy and using enraged throw"

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/2166

Thinking of trying this alongside some AI and difficulty/5e-type rules mods for my next run, as the balance in the base game is terrible. e.g. some (probably not all) of these:

Immersive AI
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1835

Rest Tweaks
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1432

True Initiative (D20 Initiative Rolls)
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1115

Arcane Acuity Rebalance
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/2083

Zerd's Rules As Written (RAW)
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1329

Tavern Brawler Rebalanced
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1267

ProperRange - Ranged and Throwing Weapons Range Rework
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/430

BG3 Fixed - Fixes and PnP Rules
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/998

Bard Fixes and Tweaks
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/866

Tactician Plus
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/661

Fix Bad DM
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/606

Yes it does, I hear this fallacious argument wheeled out all the time, but balance does still matter a lot in single-player game, otherwise they becomes boring very quickly and players have to go through hoops if they want to avoid all the broken stuff. Difficulty should be managed by having flexible difficulty levels, not in having broken base mechanics (e.g. Larian's interpretation of Haste completely breaking the action economy, Tavern Brawler nonsense etc.).

It does and a lot. Games are only fun when they are properly challenging, meaning you should neither be overpowered nor underpowered. Balancing for PVE and PVP can be vastly different, just take a look at Elden Ring which introduced a lot of changes only for PVP because it was unbalanced.

Agree 100%

The game really does need to fix a lot of its interactions. Enforcing simple rules from tabletop like only 1 levelled spell per turn would go a long way to address some of the more broken aspects of it. Implementing Haste correctly, because it is supposed to only give you +1 attack and you can't take the spellcasting action with it. Fix item and ability interactions that seem to boost dmg higher than it should. Shoving shouldn't be a separate bonus action, but instead be part of the attack action like throwing is.

Maybe give us a less useless option for humans, since there is no reason to play humans compared to half-elves on a mechanical level. The racial options don't have to be 100% balanced, but there should be mechanical reasons to want to play all of them and humans just don't have that because half-elves just do everything they do better.

On the other hand, the availability of magical items, the lack of attunement slots and the unrestricted use of spell scrolls are probably overall a good thing. Compared to Solasta, for example, martial characters feel much more worthwhile in BG3 and big part of that is definitely their access to magical stuff.

It feels like they designed BG3 with Divinity: Original Sin 2 as a reference. That has positive and negative sides. One of the negative sides that is really shining through is that in the DOS games, every character is a spellcaster in one way or another, because martial abilities are themselves treated as spells. That 5e doesn't treat its martial characters like that has long been a problem in tabletop and it is still a problem in BG3, even with the added weapon maneuvers tied to weapon proficiency.

In tabletop, most martial characters (outside of some very specific and synergistic multiclass combinations that usually rely on spells from half-casters and fullcasters anyway) feel underwhelming while spellcasters who does the bare minimum to optimize can very easily become overpowered. Some spellcasters, like Druids or Wizards, can even accident themselves into being OP by just preparing the right spells (like Conjure Animal). In BG3, most martials feel like they can quickly push towards being overpowered, while spellcasters just breaks the game.

I dont understand why ppl complain about the haste.
They are absolutely ridiculous lvl of abuse in this game. Stating with changing the difficulty that heals everyone to full. And sooooo boy the list is huge.
I think the biggest flaws in the game is that enemys have zero tool's to fight back. They don't have armor dmg healings resurrection spell (every npc have maximum 4 spells prepared) they don't have magic items. Maximum armor class boss is 22 that is the top. In the other hand the player can have even 50.
The damage that we can stack up is insane for mages and figthers alike its like minimum 20-100 /hit. In the mean time enemy is useing maximum +2 magic weapon and I only find one enemy that is actually useing it. Because Orin is transforming. And from that point on she is weaker have less ac less attack / round.

I think i could write a novel about what is wrong in Baldur's Gates combat.

Haste simply wasn't designed to give you +1 action in tabletop, like it does in BG3 (on top of +2 AC, double movement and advantage on dex saves). It gives you a special "Haste action" that you can use to Dash, Disengage, Hide, Obect Interaction or make 1 weapon attack. It can't be used to cast spells and it doesn't work with features that give you additional attacks. I think people mention Haste so often because it is such an obvious case of maknig an effect too strong relative to what it is expected to be, especially how easy it is to get your hands on a stack of Haste potions early on since Hyena Ears (dropped by gnolls) are the main ingredient. It's the tip of the iceberg that everyone will notice almost immediately.

Another interaction that might go a long way to balance some parts of the game is to simply enforce the 1 levelled spell per turn rule from tabletop. You toss a Fireball? It doesn't matter how many actions or bonus actions you have, you can only use cantrips until your next turn, unless it is on your reaction. You needed to Misty Step away? Only cantrips for you the rest of the turn. Etc.

I don't think bringing monsters up to where the game is currently allowing players to go would be the solution, because that would make a lot of characters just flat out unviable because they're not designed to deal with that environment. And it would be unreasonable to expect your random player to be able to optimize for that environment, or even want to. I certainly would lose interest quickly if I couldn't make the roleplay characters I wanted. Instead, fixing a lot of the broken interactions and mechanics to bring the ceiling down a bit, then adjust higher difficulties for that new ceiling is what I think would be the best solution.