And on the second: I have to disagree, I am afraid, because I've had the exact same scenario happen in Solasta, where the rules are a lot more accurate and the itemization is reined in. Potions of too much strength are just as available there though, so that might play a role, but still - a level 11 fighter with a good weapon capable of doing 6 attacks per round at ~20 damage each plus criticals makes everything the casters are capable of in terms of damage pale spectacularly by comparison. In BG3 it's just even more pronounced thanks to the great weapon master feat (a PHb one!) in combination with the Battle Master's accuracy boost compensating for the -5 penalty you're taking. It's not 3.5e where shields can provide ridiculous AC boosts and dual-wielding can make you attack 6-7 times a round to compensate for how plainly superior two-handed weapons are raw damage-wise.
About the only damage-dealing spell that remained useful throughout in BG3 in my experience was cloudkill, and the mega Magic Missile you get from the Red Knight book, which is practically endgame. Monks too are busted, which you can get a first-hand experience of during the Act 2-3 interrim. Stunning Fist working on everything in existence, just like sneak attack, is rather stupid. Though I don't disagree with there being way too many plain broken items, like the gauntlets of disadvantage against combat maneuvers and heavy armor reducing damage far too much.
Overall, the final third of the game needs a big rebalance (and the level cap should really be 14, there's more than enough XP in the game to get there...), and Act 3 really shows that the game got the Dragon Commander treatment of being released as-is. Something did feel off about how the marketing in the final months took a 180 and the release date got shifted to an earlier day of all things. I suppose Starfield didn't hamper the sales much this way, at least... Still, the community update 24 read as disingenuous, because you can see the seams holding the release version together in some places. Owning up to having messed up would have probably been a better move rather than saying that what we got was all intentional.
Let's be clear: Fighters are totally capable of great single-round burst in 5e RAW, doing more damage to a target in a single round than a caster can do *for a limited time* and I actually think that's perfectly balanced (since casters get, you know, all that other stuff like AoE and super powerful crowd control and movement.) The thing is that Larian makes martials WAY more powerful through
1. Itemization that allows you to achieve incredibly high levels of strength
2. Gear (including gear that outright adds extra die rolls to every melee hit)
3. Haste being IMPLEMENTED WRONG *this more than anything is the big one*
You mention 6 attacks per round. Properly implemented, a 12th level fighter can do that ONCE in a battle with action surge (with it being restored on a short rest.) Haste could give him +1 attack per round for a total of 7 attacks within a round that he could do once per battle if properly set up. So let's say 14d6 + 21 (for a +3 weapon, which is pretty generous) + 35 (assuming 20 strength.) I think that's an average of like 105 damage. With GWM you could do significantly more (a whopping + 10 per attack, so an additional 70 damage...*assuming all attacks hit.*) I think at level 12 the average monster ac is 17, and proficiency bonus of 4, weapon +3, and 5 stength adds up to 12; if you use GWM you have +7 instead....so without using GWM you could expect 75% of your hits to connect, with GWM you could expect 50%....so without GWM you would do .75 * 105 or around 76 damage, while with GWM you would do .5 * 175 or around 85 damage. Now think of the fact that in BG3 through various items and in-game buffs you can get to like, what, 26 strength, for a +8 bonus instead of +5? 14d6 + 21 + 56? That changes it to .9 * 126 without GWM for 113 damage, or .65 * 196 with GWM for 127 damage. Then consider JUST Balduran's GS, which DOUBLES your strength bonus on a hit? .9 * 182 for 164 damage or .65 * 252 for...164 damage (yeah, in some regimes GWM seems like it may not actually matter. Though of course you could do way more damage with GWM than without on against a paralyzed target, which is not difficult to get). And tis isn't even getting into the items the game gives you that just outright add damage on top of every melee hit.
Keep in mind that this is all off the top of my head (I usually main a wizard both in tabletop and in this game) so I might be wrong about something here. There's also things to take into account like spells that may buff or give your fighter advantage on attacks, etc. But let's not get too dragged down debating the specifics, the point is that you could absolutely burst in 5e tabletop, but for MUCH less than you can burst in BG3, and most importantly you could only do it once per short rest, and only once within any battle. Because every other turn, haste only gives you +1 attack per round, meaning you'd have 4 attacks per round. In BG3, however, haste gives you an extra FULL ACTION each round, meaning that as long as you are hasted you can make your full 6 attacks per round. Add action surge on top of that, and it's 9 attacks per round. BG3 essentially lets a hasted fighter do the whole "Single round mega burst that i can only pull off once per battle" EVERY SINGLE ROUND. This is an insane boost to fighter dps (and indeed to martials in general) made worse by the fact that it is NOT difficult to get haste, even without a caster.
I don't consider it imbalaned in 5e that a fighter, burning his "once per battle" resource, can do more single target damage in a round than a caster can. What makes it imbalanced (and makes casters feel impotent in comparison) is letting them do the same ALL THE TIME. It's not helped by the fact that Larian's homebrew HEAVILY nerfed a bunch of caster crowd control spells, made sleeping mobs easier to wake up, and has a bunch of crowd control spells STILL BUGGED (spells like hold person roll a save at the beginning of the turn instead of at the end, so for an enemy to lose even one turn to hold person they get to save twice, and apparently the DCs of surface CC effects are incorrectly low.) So when casters are trying to do anything BUT damage (you know...a humongous part of what their class does) they are severely gimped. But it's okay, because Larian actually added in a bunch of items that make Magic Missile the best damage spell in 90 percent of cases by adding +damage die, + damage and extra missiles to every cast, all achieved through itemization of course. (Haha it's not okay I hate that.)
I will INSIST that 5e is not responsible for the broken balance in this game. First because it's not, but second because this is the one thing that Larian did that actively pissed me off. I've played Larian games before, see, and I've experienced BEFORE how both their plot and narrative, AND their combat systems, fall apart in the late game. In multiple games. This is not new for them. For BG3, I thought to myself: "Well, at least they're using someone else's much-more-tested combat system. It is true that DnD 5e can start to fall apart at higher levels, but a level cap of 12 should be fine. Even if I expect their narrative to fall apart, I can expect the gameplay to hold up in the late game."
So while I was disappointed with what happened to the plot in act 3, I wasn't exactly shocked. I kind of expected it. What actually *angered* me is that they took someone else's combat system and BROKE IT SO THAT IT FELL APART JUST LIKE THEIR CUSTOM BATTLE SYSTEM ANYWAY. It was COMPLETELY unnecessary, they shot themselves in the foot with their own modifications to the system and by having basically zero restraint when it came to the items they were handing out. In my very first game I ever DM'd when I was like, THIRTEEN, I handed out magic items like candy because I thought that would make people happy, only to realize that it totally threw off the balance and made it difficult to come up with appropriate challenges, which made it boring for players after a while. If I could learn that lesson as a CHILD, why is Larian making *the exact same mistakes?!* I'm sorry, I'm probably ranting at this point, but this specific thing really stuck in my craw. Due to my history with Larian games, I was prepared for disappointment in the plot. I was not prepared for them to actively break another, already-made combat system so that it had the same problems their own custom system had.
