Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian please add another difficulty. Game is too easy

My first playthrough was on Balanced, my second on Tactician, I am on my third playthrough again on Tactician. From my experience there needs to be another difficulty level because Tactician does not present a significant increase in the difficulty level from Balanced.

Having completed my first game I wanted to up the challenge but I found that Tactician was no more challenging than my first playthrough. There were very few fights that now challenged me. Most were no more difficult to the experienced me quite a few were easier.

Anyone who has completed BG3 on Balanced will not be challenged by Tactician. Tactician is simply not a challenge for an experienced player.

Agreed. I had to download a mod that triples the enemy HP because spear-throwing Karlach was one-shotting every monster on the battlefield before they could even move.

Yeah but if you're using Larianisms like Tavern brawler thrower(monk) or double hand crossbows; or 5Eisms like Warlock/Paladin, Rogue/Monk or Gloomstalker/Assassin to beat the game easily - that's really on you.

They're basically exploits at this point and shouldn't be held up as baselines.

In fact, they should get nerfed the heck down to reality:

- Tavern brawler shouldn't add anything to hit %
- Throwing weapons shouldn't calculate extra weight damage
- All crossbows should require a free hand to reload
- Duel-wielded handcrossbows should follow duel wielding rules and not add Dex damage to off-hand
- Paladin smites shouldn't access warlock slots
- Heck, impose TT heavy armour rules, <Str15 in plate? Disadvantage.
- Impose TT multiclassing rules, minimum 13 in prime ability scores for multiclassing
- Rework gloomstalker by removing 1st round extra attack. Assassin shouldn't be upstaged at assassinating.

And cut XP awards in half for Tactician. Characters will be lucky to hit level 11 at endgame.

You don't need to use any of those as a baseline as you really don't need a baseline, just compare the relative challenge of Tactician to Balanced to see Tactician difficulty level has been set too low. Experience of beating BG3 on Balanced negates any increase in difficulty that Tactician provides.

To my mind the real problem and not just in BG3 is the lack of difficulty levels. Just 3 Easy, Normal and Hard is really not enough. I remember when games like BG would have had a level above Hard with a suitably fitting name to match the difficulty level such as Insane. If BG3 and an Insane level there would be no more "the game is too easy".

Actually in BG1-2 Plane escape and IWD 1-2.
There is Story Mode /Easy /Normal / D&d rules /Insane difficulty.
But story mode was a toggle option.

Baselines aside, what they really need are random surprises in each fight because regardless of how they beef foes, we already know their positions, triggers and schticks. But boy, would that be an ordeal recalibrating even just every second fight.

I think the real issue here is deciding that just because "You can basically kill almost every encounter with spamming sneak attacks with Astarion and Cantrip magic" means you actually should. What if you changed your playstyle to potentially suboptimal yet interesting and unique strategies instead? What if you imposed a challenge on yourself like a No Astarion/Stealth run?




Hey Larian the game isn't fun when I play it like this.

Then don't play it like that.

If such things are in the game by design, then the designed game balance is bad. And if the designed game balance is bad, it is on the ones who designed the balance to fix it, not the players. Simple as.

It's too easy without stealth. You don't have to have an optimized build to walk through encounters after achieving the first few levels.

That said, I still think your solution is questionable. It's like, "Larian, the game is too easy when I use a weapon in combat."

And your response is, "Well, don't use a weapon, duh!"

I am on my 4'th playthrough and I played only Tactician, I admit first playthrough had a bit of trouble on some encounters, but except that I just rollfaced every encounter, after this playthrough I think I won't play anymore since I have no reason to, except if Larian increases the difficulty or add epilogues, or some new content.

I think cutting XP in half for Tactician makes a lot of sense (or maybe to 60%). It's easy to implement and you could still come close to max Level by the end of the game. I like the difficulty in Act 1 and I'm still waiting for Custom parties before continuing to play, so I'm mostly going on the observations of others. Based on what I've read, I am sure I will be 12th Level around the start of Act 3 (because I'm a completionist) and I don't like that I will be max level so early.

And then comes wizard sorcerer druid cleric bard but I only use my hand and magic. Then don't use magic.
The it comes a monk beating everything with just hand.
Then don't use the hand .

At the final it comes the barrelmancer and we all know the 4 halflings.
It such a stupid answer.

Cutting the XP to 60% will still give the player around 7-8 lvl at act 2. And that is still easy mode.
When I do every single thing in act 1 I will end at lvl 7 and I need 1 encounter to be 8.
But in act 2 there is a ton of XP enugh to reach lvl 10.

Maybe try simply not min-maxing the fun out of the game and stop looking up the BEST BUILDS TO BE OP videos? You can keep bringing up examples of OP stuff to ignore and as someone who doesn't look these things up and ruin the game for myself, I've never had this issue. But hey if you insist on ruining the game for yourself while you expect the devs to fix your behavior for you, go nuts. This is all starting to reek of people who think they are good at games because they look up guides online and save scum, you aren't special and ruining the game for yourself is your problem not Larians.

First, to repeat, the game is too easy on the hardest difficulty. This is not because of "OP" builds. I can take any straight class with any three companions and walk over everything in Act 2 and 3. The hardest difficulty should be fine tuned where that's not the case.

Second, no one is advocating for removing lower difficulty levels or even removing what is currently labeled tactician.

Third, you are being rude. You are making personal attacks. Why? Is that necessary? Is that helpful?

--I'm not aware of anyone here calling themselves special. Why are you going out of your way to tell them they are not special? I get the impression that you're vicariously spitting venom at someone from your past. It's not appropriate.

Guys lets not be rude here.... this should be a civil discussion. Solo plays games give people the chance to play the game the way they choose and if some people need to game to push the combat harder because of their play style that is all good.

I dont care about op builds. I am the most loud every where on this forum hou says just use a single class.
And I am one of the many ppl hou also says stop following YouTube guides.
Every one can check my previous comments. It's public.

And again many people before and including my self sayed multiple times. No one here is asking to touch easy and normal difficulty. Hells I am even aganst to touch tactician. I want a new harder difficulty or to give npc - s armor spells magic stuff to be competent.

Another thing.

There is no min maxing in this game every one can be a GOD with just items.

But its really a bad take to say don't use anything than the game will be hard make your self imaginery rules. Or to go solo. Hells next time someone will come here and tell us to not take turns. Beat the game by skipping turns.
I dont understand the reason behind of this wonderful comments. If none is asking to touch easy and normal difficulty then why the hate? What are this attacks?
There is no logical reason.

It definitely does not take being "special" or doing any crazy build to make this game too easy. In my run, I never multiclassed anyone except Astarion as a fighter/rogue, and basically ignored potions and elixirs, and combat was still far, far too easy past level 5. Even if you don't think this is true, I am pretty confident you will eventually arrive at this opinion. I've had multiple friends who didn't agree with me, initially, that the game was too easy. Now that they've learned the system a bit, they agree with me. To say this game is too easy is really not a boast at all. I fully expect that even a player completely unfamiliar with the genre will reach this conclusion on subsequent playthroughs.

The very unfortunate reality is I think the difficulty is going to be close to impossible to fix without major changes. Combat becoming trivial really is, overwhelmingly, because of the OP items Larian gives you. It's not even the absurd items you can get in the third act, either. You can get items very early on that are absurdly OP, far more than anything you'd get in tabletop even at max level. (Think of all the healing synergy items you can get very early on.)

There's other reasons, too, of course (haste implementation!) But the thing is, the haste implementation is easily fixed. Reworking the items they give you is...not. It can't be done without upsetting other people, at this point. Not unless they implement a system where the stats and effects of a magic item change depending on the difficulty you are on, with weaker and less dramatic effects at higher difficulties. And...I don't know, I don't see Larian doing that.

Exactly my experience so far, 1st run on balanced with full RP, 2nd run on tactician - semi-RPing a good-Durge with a mix of somewhat broken-ish builds. Also, both runs I hadn't accepted the astral tadpole so I was kind of gimping myself a little.

But on my 3rd tactician run right now I have a self-imposed rule even to not use any illithid powers, no tadpole munching, no access to the tree of illithid ridiculousness and the game is still too damn easy. Skill checks are somewhat harder without favorable beginnings but still manageable. Oh and playing good Durge again, but with a twist - going for a total paradox of a Selunite Durge (tempest cleric/storm sorc multi, so somewhat a meta build I guess?) cause I wanna see how the game will behave (or break narrative) in act 2. Also, this time around I am not using any of the super broken builds, mostly testing how far I can get with wacky stuff like dual shortsword/dagger wielding Astarion thief/bard multi and Karlach berserking and throwing stuff at people (or picking up enemies and using them as throwables) - those 2 are my perma companions for now, 3rd is a filler for quests I suppose. Until I get mommy Jaheira.



Oh yes, I agree with you, but you are also forgetting how broken illithid powers are as well, even without munching on the astral tadpole (cull the weak and luck of the far realms are game changers).

Also, with XP cut in half you'll still get lvl 12 by late act 3 if you do literally everything there is to do. Before Larian cheekily disabled the numbers shown once you got max lvl my friends and I were trying to calculate just how much experience is there in the game and what lvl we could possibly reach if lvl cap wasn't a thing (using D&D experience tables) and by doing everything there is to do we could pretty much get to lvl 16 with ease, maybe even lvl 18 IF we kill all the bosses instead of having a few of them literally off themselves via conversation (since killing them grants more exp).

And speaking of difficulty: in my opinion the biggest offender is the AI. Enemies will just rush your lowest AC/HP companion like total tools totally running past and triggering attacks of opportunity (and that knowledge leads to ridiculous scenarios). Or they will just spaz out when a companion goes invisible. Or when you create dangerous terrain right on their asses (electrified/icy water, greased/webbed up fire) they will either try to run (and fall prone/eat more damage) or pass their turn for some reason... Also, items. There are so many broken, build defining items scattered even in act 1!

I think an easy but decent solution to this would be give more enemies the same passives that these OP items grant the players. Lets take healing synergy passives for example. I imagine if there are more enemy clerics that can also AOE heal and apply the same buffs to their teammates, that would even the playing field a bit no? Not a perfect solution by any means but should still be easier to implement.

It would also fix a problem that i personally experienced in my playthru (not sure about other ppl), which was the enemy rarely ever healing so there was no reason for me to ever use Bone Chill or Ilmatter arrows, except for maybe 2 boss fights.