Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Larian please revert some of the changes to 5e ruleset!

The more I play BG3, the more I understand how flawed Larian’s 5E transition.

And for some absolutely ridiculous reason, almost ALL changes are for the worse. So many spells are nerfed, while haste is overbuffed. Why?

haste is kinda ok if you put it on one character, haste become ridiculas if you have sorc with dual cast xD, that why i take war mage feat on sorc and that why sorc is my fav class

Some of the comments in this thread make me worry that haste will never be properly implemented in this game.

Haste providing only one extra attack per round, instead of doubling your attacks - the way it is in tabletop 5e - does not make the spell useless. It is still a fantastic buff. One extra attack per round just seems, in BG3, relatively unimpressive because so much else in this game, from items to other class abilities, is weirdly buffed with little rhyme or reason.

It also doesn't make casters 'garbage.' A lot of the caster stuff in BG3 seems underwhelming because, for *some reason*, Larian not only wrote MASSIVE nerfs into some caster control spells compared to tabletop, and made it much easier to have an ally break you out of some control effects - but also, at least the last time I played, some of the control effects had *active bugs* making them weaker. Like the fact that for spells like hold person and confuse, an enemy makes their per-round saving throw at the beginning of their turn. This means if you want those spells to make an enemy lose at least ONE turn, they need to fail TWO saving throws. With hold person, you can at least get SOME use out of the spell if you have allies with a turn in between your caster and the enemy's turn - they can get the auto-crit benefit if the enemy fails one saving throw. For confuse, though, this essentially means that every enemy rolls with advantage against the spell to get literally any use out of it. There was also apparently a bug where ground-based control effect spells, like Evard's black tentacles, had spell DCs that were way lower than they were supposed to be. I don't know if some of this stuff has been fixed by now, but all this combined made my favorite type of caster, control casters, incredibly nerfed compared to tabletop. But that's okay! Because even if you never cast a single control spell, or haste, casters could still be absurdly powerful thanks to Larian's implementation of a ton of items that gave +damage per missile hit, which made upcast magic missiles the best spell to cast 90 percent of the time.

This is also why players of BG3 think that concentration is such an unnecessary and weird mechanic. In tabletop, concentration is meant to be a check on the often battle-deciding spells a caster can use, very often CC effects. But in BG3, tons of CC is nerfed into the ground either by Larian's choice or their bugs, and haste is way overbuffed, so most of the time concentration just becomes 'that weird thing that makes me drop haste sometimes, and means I can't cast a bunch of spells when I use the thing I should obviously be using, haste.'

That being said, I don't even think it's the changes to the ruleset that hurt the game the most. (And yes, no computer implementation of DnD rules is ever completely faithful, but so many changes Larian made were *really* bad.) It's the ITEMS more than anything. Like so early on you can get healing synergy items that bless and add blade ward to every character you heal, and this is *absurd*. (I suppose you could argue that this is in fact a change to the ruleset because DnD would advise you not to hand out items so powerful at such a low level.) And these items are just the start to a game filled with insanely overpowered items.

Edit: As far as "optimizing the fun out of a game" goes, I *really* disagree that is the case here. Part of the *fun* of a game is trying to figure out what the optimal choices are in any given situation. If the optimal choice keeps on being "caste haste", you've made a boring game. "Using a spell that you have access to in the normal course of play" is hardly some obscure, arcane strategy arrived at by people straining to be as optimal as possible.

Sure, it is fun to figure it out. And when you have your sorcerer that shoots lightning bolts in every direction and wipes out an entire room of high hp enemies, you've done that. And you had fun. That's good. You haven't optimized the fun out of the game.

But, if subsequently, that is all you ever do, and due to that, you are now not having fun, now you are at a point where you have optimized the fun out of the game. And this gets even worse when you get the people who fall into the "If it isn't the best, it is garbage" mindset, and who will set out to try and force everyone else to play the way they do. This is a single player game. That means two things. The first, the single player bit, means that you can play however you want, and it won't ruin the game for anyone else (unless you're one of those munchkins I just mentioned). The second is that it is a game. Something those of us who are not content creators do for fun. If you are not having fun, either change how you play or go do something you do find fun. Heck, go find other optimal ways to play.

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
"Well, don't do that."

When it comes to a game, that's good advice.

And note that I'm not saying Haste is balanced. I've already said it isn't. But if you have the slightest bit of willpower, you can just not use it. Nobody is aiming a hand crossbow at your head from 18m away, forcing you to.

This is a great explanation of the problem. This is a role playing game, are players so weak minded in a solo RPG that they cannot play beyond the game mechanics and need Larian to hold their hand with in game limitations so they do not break their own RPG?

I find it extremely disheartening that a mod on Larian's forum has this dismissive attitude about this issue, and just makes me more convinced that the issues with this game's combat won't ever really be addressed.

Look, almost every combat system has things you can cheese to break it. Hell, quite arguably the first BG1 outright leaned into this - you basically *had* to cheese things a bit to survive. BG2 wasn't quite so unforgiving, but also had very cheesy strategies or things you could abuse to make the game too easy.

The problem with saying "Oh, so just don't do the things that make the game too easy" with BG3 is tied to the fact that BG3 is a *very easy game* even on maximum difficulty. For all my complaints about haste, I actually used it fairly rarely myself - just because you steamrolled over almost everything regardless. In a lot of ways, I DID limit myself when I did my playthrough. I wore gear on my MC based entirely off whether I thought it looked cool. I pushed myself to use control spells - even when those spells were massively nerfed, or outright bugged in ways that nerfed them even further - just because I like control casters, even though I could have probably just been nuking everything to death with all the +damage per missile you can stack on top of magic missile. I pushed myself to get as much out of each day as possible, going into combat with very little resources, rather than taking the free rests I could have had. (Even though the game obnoxiously actively punishes you for doing this.) I didn't use potions at all.

But at some point, when your answer to "This makes your game unfun because it makes it too easy" is to just say "Don't use it then", and then I go and look at the list of things I "just shouldn't use" and it includes multiple spells, a bunch of gear, potions, certain builds, etc., eventually, I'm going to call bullshit. No, in fact, the problem is *not* that I simply insist on using a few things that make the game unfun. The problem is that the devs did not do a good job balancing this game.

I think the concept of game balance was never on Larian's radar - they simply want everything to be OTT and actively encourage people to abuse mechanics and gimmicks (*cough*tadpole ) They had a chance to course correct during the EA, when I assumed a lot of the 'home brew' was to be adjusted - sadly not. In my book the non-5E mechanics seriously degraded my enjoyment - I simply don't think the game (as a 5E D&D game) deserves the high praise it has received. I haven't tried playing with mods - but I should not have to. They broke the game systems - and they should fix them. Then there are issues with story (pacing, tadpole), lack of day and night, near-free infinite respec, any class using any spell scroll (no check required even), excessive consumables, abundant overpowered magic etc. And the 'simplification makes it easier for new players' argument doesn't wash - 5e is the simplest D&D in recent memory, you can scaffold the game with tutorials to introduce the necessary concepts. Are people so afraid to actually stretch their brains these days? Learning something new can be fun, and devs have done that in may other games. I enjoyed a lot that BG3 offered - for awhile - but as a tactical 5e game, it is just not very good. And the deficiencies are baked into every aspect of the encounter design.

Every time someone says "if you don't like it, don't use it" a lovely discussion here on the forum dies. Ha ha.

The action economy is at the very core of each turn based system and it's already figured out in dnd. So why does Larian feel the need to change it? Serious question.

I'm fine with using mods, so no big deal, but I just don't get it. I'm coming from d:os1 / d:os2 and remember very well how annoying the energy-shield-like armor mechanic felt throughout d:os2 while it was perfectly fine in d:os1. So I was glad to hear bg3 would implement the dnd rule set. Didn't know much about it, only that it's a proven, well established system. Then I felt, hmm, some stuff doesn't quite add up. Then I realized, ah ok, that's mostly because of Larian's deviations from the rules. Like I said, I just don't get it.

Obviously there's much love put into bg3. So what is it about?

Interestingly enough it's almost the same for me with story and characters: last minute changes and a somewhat unfinished main story line make it feel like it doesn't quite add up either. A slight but also completely unnecessary let down.

If there's going to be a tombstone for it in Larian's next rpg, it'll say: "Here lies Baldurs Gate 3. It could have been great."

There's a key difference, though, between discussing things being unbalanced, and saying something silly like, "Because this exists, you have to use it." The first is a discussion, on why it is bad for the game, maybe why it is good (different people will have different opinions), and what could be done to address this or that. The second is someone falling into the trap of "If it isn't the best, it is garbage", and therefore not being able to stop themselves from using it. If you have to use one particular thing because encounters are incredibly frustrating/unbeatable for most players without it, that is one thing. That's the game essentially limiting what you can do. Saying you have to use it because perfectly beatable encounters are super-trivialized by it, and this is ruining your game play experience, is another. Because there you have other options, but you are choosing to do something you find not fun even though you don't need to. And, obviously, if you feel too much is unbalanced, then your overall enjoyment of the game will suffer, and that's another matter.

So, yeah, discussions good. Ruining your own game play experience because "X is best, therefore it is the only way to play" bad.

I strongly dislike the "if you don't like it don't use it" take, and I find it very dismissive and thoughtless.

- If I play a video game, I generally try to be effective in what I'm doing, unless I'm setting a particular challenge to myself.
- Even if I do set particular challenge to myself, I try to be as effective as I reasonably can be within the challenge I've set.
- I generally only get to the point of setting challenges for myself if the foundation of the game is solid, enjoyable and pretty decently balanced already.

Core point: If I find myself making excuses to play ineffectively, or feel like I'm not playing effectively within the bounds of what I'm doing, I generally do not enjoy myself; at the very least, it's a sore point that saps my fun.

- I enjoy variety, and I enjoy using a decently thorough spread of the abilities and options at my disposal; identifying the effective ways and places to use various elements of the game system, and tackling the game's challenges with the tool kit presented to me.
- The less variety I find myself engaging in, the less I enjoy my experience.

Core Point: If find myself making excuses to avoid doing something that I know will work because it was the same thing I did for the last dozen situations, I generally do not enjoy myself; at the very least, it's a sore point that saps my fun.

This leaves me at this point: If I play game where one or two things are the 'always works, always win' solutions, to the point that doing other things instead feels actively ineffective, or like I'm pointedly ignoring doing the effective thing for no reason beyond it being boring and repetitive - that I must be actively ineffective to explore or use the majority of my toolkit, then the reality is that I am not going to enjoy myself, and the game has Failed to create or present a compelling system for me to engage with.

Most video games that I play that are more advanced than little home-made flash games, avoid this problem; my thresholds for what I've described here aren't that high.... BG3, however, fails to avoid this problem, for me at least, so far.

Saying "Well, if that ability works too well and makes everything else pointless, why don't you just not use it?" is patronising, and frankly, a little offensive, as well as being dismissive. It assumes I'm not, and it ignores the fact that doing so will not, in any real way, improve my enjoyment of the game, when I know that the "I win" button is there, at all times, and that I'm just wasting time and being ineffective for no functional reason by not using it. It's not a "ruining your own game experience and then being upset" situation - it's a "Damned if I do and damned if I don't" situation - and that is a fault of the game's design and balance. If I could turn my brain off and be mindlessly entertained by the flashy colours and bright explosions, and the game congratulating me and telling me I win every time I push the same one or two buttons over and over, perhaps I would, and perhaps I'd enjoy the combat in this game if I could: I can't do that... I need the game to be better.

Except it's not directly patronizing to you in the least and there's no reason for you to take it personally.

A large number of mass-appeal games have easy-win mode because that's want the majority of paying customers want, easy entertainment, not a challenge.

If you don't like the game the way it is and can't handle not using easy-mode then you move on or wait and play something else to see if they release an increased difficulty level.

Oh the irony now of "If you don't like the game, go play something else".

"Patronizing? I'll give you patronizing!" Hehe

Anyway, I wouldn't assume that flawed balancing / translation from dnd mechanics were introduced deliberately to appeal to casual gamers or mass market. Difficultly levels and balancing are different things after all.

A nice figure of speech, if it weren't for the range of a hand crossbow being fifteen metres.

I believe it hasn't been mentioned before, but there is also the matter of role playing, or immersion. A game is fun if it succeeds in allowing part of yourself to be transferred to your avatar. Then you really feel butterflies in your stomach when you secretly admire a companion. Then you really feel the pain of a maul landing squarely on your skull. You really feel the bitter cold of betrayal. Immersive role playing stimulates the ol' emotions, and that's a good thing. Now would you, in real life, when you encounter an enemy, and you know a fight to the death will ensue, arm yourself with a dagger, or with dual +3 crossbows of mighty mayhem that you also happen to have in your backpack?

So the point is: not optimising yourself on purpose could be considered harmful to role playing.

Fixing some of the broken interactions, overpowered abilities and making every racial option appealing from a gameplay perspective has a benefit I think is very important: It opens the field for more varied characters without forcing people to intentionally play suboptimally. It would also give the optimizers more options for how they want to minmax the game, with more variety.

I don't see how making the game a bit more balanced would hurt anyone here. Isn't it boring to rely on the same abilities over and over when you're optimizing? I certainly don't find it very engaging that Haste is a fixed part of the solution to any encounter.

It is disheartening. I'm finding myself starting to dislike the game because it feels like it either fundamentally doesn't understand, or just flat out dislikes, D&D mechanics. I've been excited for this game for years, and they went and tossed out things like Action Economy and resource management. The game is a cakewalk even without abusing Haste, because I have to rest all the time to progress the story, and there are almost no rest restrictions! It's equally safe to rest in the Underdark as at an inn in Baldur's Gate.

I'm basically forced to play the game with a checklist of restrictions just so I can have something like D&D. I didn't expect a 100% faithful port of the rules -- in fact some of the changes are cool, but others break fundamental game systems. I figured this one would be part of my all-time game rotation, like every other D&D cRPG, but at this point I'm waiting on mods to salvage it.

Worth noting that you can add yet another self-restriction with the rest thing, by not using food when you long rest. That way, you won't get spells back and such, but you can advance the story.

But yeah, the instant short rests and the long rest almost anywhere, without risk, definitely boosts the power of resource using characters. Would have been nice if, on Tactician, long rests had the ol' "interrupted rest/camp ambush" possibility the previous BG and spin-off games had.

Oh god no.

Thats something I really dont need back.

Being restricted in a location, unable to leave to a safe spot, and you have to fight one ambush after the other, again and again, while the fatigue of your group kept increasing and increasing.

Being able to rest anywhere - as often as you want - sucks tension out of the game. Risk free resting everywhere is also something that earlier BG games didn't have, and means that you needed to..you know...plan things. And not just spam all your most potent abilities. Not having it, even on Tactician, is not really defensible. A well designed game and encounter sequence pushes you hard enough so that you can *just* make it, if you manage your resources - I never felt threatened in BG3. And adding things like those angelic potions - that mean even when you can't rest...you *can* actually rest - is another poor design choice.

In BG, IWD etc., you could rest anywhere as well, but you had a chance to be ambushed... just reload and rest again - done. Not a good system.

In NWN you can just sit down and rest in a corridor for 5 sec and you're good to go blasting meteor showers and horrid wiltings on them bandits in the next room.

It's only ToEE that punished resting in a wrong place really hard - you still could do it, but you would be ambushed 100%, unlike BG, where it was a coin flip. You absolutely had to get out of that maze of a temple, search for shortcuts and go rest in an inn. Gotta admit, the tension because of this was high. And it did not feel like a chore - you had to be careful, plan your resources and think about every spell slot - "is it worth to use now, or we can go without and save it for something more dangerous".

At the same time, Temple of Elemental Evil is a pinnacle of DnD dungeon crawling, so can't really compare BG3 to it.

Imagine now in BG3 there are no portals to move around and no fast travel and no possibility to just port to camp when you need to rest - you have to run to a hub for resting. Or use Larians pyramid to port back to a safe spot? Will the game be better? Don't think so.

It's our choice as a player to rest whenever we want - do it after every encounter or limit yourself to rest in a way that makes sense from RP perspective.