Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Haste spell balance suggestion

Hello adventurers!

First off, thank you to Larian for a great game. I'm seriously having a blast playing with my friends and yeah, we're all enjoying it!

The title pretty much sums it up, the haste spell is incredibly strong and I would say its too strong. The BIG difference between haste in BG3 and DnD5e is that the extra action that you get in DnD5e can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action.

Many other spells have been rebalanced for BG3 and most of them are tuned down (rightfully so) to balance the gap between marshal characters and casters, CC getting lower duration come to mind. And this is coming from a player that only plays mage classes.

Haste also uses your concentration, which means you cant use any other concentration spell at the same time. That is all fine and dandy but since haste is so strong in BG3 I feel like I'm making a very sub optimal decision if I'm not using haste since its so strong. This in turn forces you to use your concentration on haste almost every fight instead of opening up all kinds of opportunities to use other fun spells to solve fights. Especially true if you are playing a sorcerer that can twin it on two of your party members, sheesh!

If restricting the extra action from haste is a technical issue that would take too much time to fix then here are some alternatives that me and my group of friends talked about the other night:

1st: Making the duration of haste much lower, 2 turns or so to follow the same logic as the CC spells rebalanced from DnD5e. This would give you the option to similarly to Divinity OS2's version of Haste give you a really strong couple of turns but then suffer the lethargic condition and have to skip a turn later.

2nd: Removing the extra action entirely but instead make it a non concentration spell.

Thanks for reading my post and please comment if you agree so we can bring this to the developers attention!
Hugs and kisses /Asmo

TLDR: Haste is too strong, metagamey and limits playstyle, please consider nerfing the duration or the condition.
Edit: spelling errors

May I also suggest that Larian adds more enemy spellcasters that also caste Haste, or better yet, cast Slow in response to the player casting Haste. It'd also be cool to introduce other non-magical mechanics that can inflict Slow, so that enemy non-spellcasters and creatures can counter Haste as well.

If all else, it wouldn't be too hard to just rework haste to follow DnD5e rules. There are already some abilities/buffs that give access to other abilities. Just make it so that instead of giving an action, it gives access to once-per-turn mutually exclusive abilities to do a single attack, dash, disengage, hide, or use an object.

I agree, that would be Ideal!

If you lowered the duration to 2 turns no one would use the spell, they would just use haste potions which last 3 turns. So what would you do about haste potions reduce them to 2 turns most would still favour potions over the spell, 1 turn, the potion would be a negative buff.

Haste does not limit playstyle, it is the player that limits playstyle through choice. I am on my third playthrough, very rarely have I used the haste spell I use the potions. You can choose not to limit your play style sometimes you could use haste potions freeing up your sorcerer's concentration for another spell.

So remove the extra action and what's the point of haste now? Run a bit further? Longstrider covers that.
If you got haste nerfed I reckon you'd end up a pretty unpopular member of BG3 community lol.

Damn I completely missed that.

the spells doesn't need nerfing, the enemy needs buffing

Honestly yea i concur with this, which is why I suggested that the enemies should also be given Haste, from spells or otherwise. That or they are given tools to counter Haste, such as Slow spells (some enemies do cast Slow but they're far too few in between).

The problem they are only casting slow and nothing else.
For example some of the ff mages have slow. But if you cast dominate persone you will be suprised how few spells have they prepared.

Yea i dont believe that Slow spell should be the end all be all solution to countering Haste, there should be other means to inflict Slow and Slow-like conditions too. I'm thinking something along the line of Slow-poisoned arrows, Slow bombs like a counterpart to Haste Spore bombs. As for non-humanoids, maybe make some creatures have a passive where their blood is so foul-smelling that if you hit them in melee range and get some of that blood splattered onto you, you lose the ability to perform additional actions. Just to name a couple of ideas.

Agreed. I think the ideal solution would be to give enemy spellcasters a wider range of spells to work with, especially crowd control and utility spells.
I'm no programmer but I imagine that would require lots of improving their AIs to be able to effectively use those spells, which would be very labor-intensive assuming its even possible.

As for Haste itself, i just looked up the spell in DnD (never played DnD myself), and i think that version of the spell is pretty fair, not sure why Larian felt the need to flatout buff it.

Mybe not because if your character get confused the AI kicks in actually the most hardest fights I had when I faced aganst my party members.
Also one of shars trial you will face a lesser copy of your party. And they can use spell and on the top of that the are use it intelligently. Mybe it was random but it happened to me at least 12 times with different type of characters. So I think the AI isn't the problem.

Just make Haste work like in 5e should solve the problem, shouldnt it ?

I think too.
But ppl like it because it's fun to make more attacks and cast more spells in 1 turn.
So here is the dilemma fun and ower powered or booring 5e.
That's why some folks are dont want the change.

I already find enemies eager to target my Haste casters, and losing that concentration, especially if you have it twin casted, gives you a harsh punishment with two lost turns (that you can't negate by recasting haste). Haste is powerful, but casting haste also means you're not using any other concentration spells on that character.

It honestly doesn't seem that overpowered to me. It's on the more powerful end, sure, but there are other things on that end, and it can be countered. If anything, giving enemies some more counters (or more spells/options in general) sounds good to me. You don't even need slow. Getting knocked prone is a guaranteed loss of concentration, so giving enemies some ice surface creation can already be a good counter.

I'm also always in favor of giving enemies the same tools we have access to.