Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why capped at level 12?

I still have lots of gameplay left and am level 12 with 34,000 XP built up for…nothing more. Why did Larian cap at level 12, why still award/track XP one will never be able to spend? Im D&D ignorant but doesn’t it cap around level 20?

Levelling and spending points on character building is my favorite part of gaming and having that end with so much left stinks for me. I think that alone might prevent me from another play through and I’d rather go back to DOS2 for a 4th time than BG3 again.

Larian studios did not prepare higher level spells and ability animations.

Originaly it was to cap at 10, lvls 11-12 were supposedly last-gasp additions. IMO cutting XP gain by 25% would had been better.

I don’t know what a last gasp addition is supposed to be, but if that means this was an abrupt decision, that is incorrect. They announced they were increasing the level cap from 10 super early into EA.

It is better to have more gameplay and no more leveling up, this means you do not need to kill to complete quest for that xp scraps, your character already "completed" and perform in full capacity.

I can see that perspective, then I would prefer they stop giving me xp and still tracking it.

That would be good, but I can see why the Dev doesn't implement it.

I say.. just ignore it.

Part of the fun for me is continuous improvement. I would rather keep getting levels for the whole game even if you got increasingly less stuff. Like every level after 12 all you get is a feat or something like that.

Probably not going to happen since the game uses 5e system. Maybe for their own Divinity Game.

I had more than 150k exp floating on top of my lvl 12, which is enough to be level 17, halfway to 18.

Still, despite reaching level cap so early, Act 3 was interesting enough to keep going and exploring all the way till the end - which is a huge achievement for a game that focuses on character development and leveling.

Indeed higher levels would be nice, but they said they didnt know how to implement even higher level spells, because they would get too godlike.

There is a Easy way.. Just let people Multi class till 20 or 15
but if yu dont want to brake the game making all of then Demy Gods.. just let the Main at least go a litle bit Higher i would love that..
and they say that the enemys would have to be Strong.. but man.. did yu Beat the Game ?
yu know how hard is for a 4 man party in a table top of 12 lvl cap beat the end Boss ? yu know Reaaally what that thing reaally is..
will say nothing more but.. Larian reaaaaally make the last boss weaker in the game just say that..
becouse in a table top.. evrybody will be dead the first time yu fail in a check and without wish.. forget it..huahuahua
just try become a demi god then come back to wipe the flor with him.. but will still be a hard battle dont get me wrong.

I dont want to multiclass.



Absurdely strong end bosses unfortunately are a kind of tradition in D&D computer games.

In BG1 you face a level 17 fighter with amazing stats (Str 18/00, Dex 18, Con 18) and amazing gear (Vampiric Sword +5) and a lot of also really powerful allies with a level 7-9 group. Fix in the original game: use wands and fill the room with summons. Unfortunately they later "fixed" that. You could travel with this character in ToB (though at that point he's not that impressive anymore, also he's still an a**).

In BG2 you face some OP spellcaster that you simply. Cannot. Touch. Not with spells, not with weapons. The tricks here is to keep summon mobs and send them to him until he runs low on spells. Only then you finally can actually damage him, after which he obviously is easy.

In BG2 ToB you face some completely OP spellcaster who even with a full maxlevel group is extremely hard to beat, and theres no real strategy that I know of except keeping to retry, plus of course in the late game the original game is kind of really buggy and just loves to crash in this fight.

In The Temple of Elemental Evil you face a really highlevel demon (dont remember the exact level) at the end that I could only kill with bug abuse. According to original D&D3 documentation a level 10 group shouldnt be able to beat this opponent, full stop. Then I instantly teleported to the questgiver, only to be told that I was somehow too slow to travel there. Another one of the many bugs of that game.

Dont remember much of NWN1 or NWN2, neither of which I enjoyed much, and in NWN1 you would even be solo. I do remember that in the NWN2 addon Storms of Zephyr (by far my favorite NWN content) my group was maxlevel and equipped as well as I could manage and still the final boss needed multiple retries.

While I love this game, if you understand the combat system even the hardest fights become trivial. I had no problem steamrolling over the final boss on my first try. It’s not that hard.

Granted, I’ll take that over the old games’ end bosses, who could also be cheesed but we’re designed so they really could only be cheesed, and there wasn’t much chance of victory in a straight fight.

Ah this brings memories.

The trick to beating BG saga bosses is to be a sorcerer / wizard with spells that can breach through magical defenses and put up your own - it's very much rock / paper / scissors, once you learn which spells target which protection, you dismantle all those bosses like 1,2,3.

I didn't have any issues with ToEE end boss, but IMO the hardest fight in the game was Balor. After reloading like 10 times, I had to cheese him with web / cloudkill.

But for me the toughest fights in DnD RPGs were in IWD series. IWD 1 Belhifet was insane, just as IWD 2 Isair and Madae - absolutely brutal fights.

BG3 is a joke in comparison. All you need is dimension door and globe of invulnerability scrolls lol But! I'm not complaining about BG3 fight from creativity / variety pov. Amazing job - literally every encounter is memorable, and last boss even has WoW-style elements to it. Just need little difficulty tweaks.

The answer can be even simpler. A lot of content, that gives tons of exp and loot, is optional. If you are going Lone Wolf path, you miss all the companion quests and related exp. If you go through Underdark, you might not see Creche at all, and so on.

Sure, completionists swim in exp, but those taking specific routes needed that padding to be on level by the final battle.

Good perspective, thanks for that. My current bliss in gaming comes from character building and gear buffs so XP is my currency for that. To be collecting currency with no place to use it dampens the bliss.


Role playing is not yet my jam but BG3 offers great character building and that has been fun so having that end ‘early’ is disappointing.

Im very early in gaming and I hope to grow to appreciate storyline/role playing in which case I expect to replay BG3 someday but for me right now I can’t keep character building and the game has started crashing every day so I look forward to moving on soon but to what….

this is wrong cause humans can learn things by whole of thier life, you should be able to level multi class higher without hp gain per level stay at 12 level just get skills from other classes

Well, in any other game? Maybe.

Since we're playing Dungeon & Dragons 5th Edition. There are strict rules and adjusted rules based on level/encounter design to keep the game balanced.

In this game, you capped at Level 12.

Human can hit a person standing in front of him easily, in real life. But in this game, if your enemy has 25 DC, no matter how big your sword is if your dice rolls failed, you will missed.

That's just how it works. It does not necessarily abide to "well, in real life human [insert point]".

Nope.

Liches for example are immune to level 5 spells and thus immune to Breach.

There may be some spells who can disarm the final SoA boss but I havent found them. Sending him again and again some lowly summon to waste spells on works very nicely though. Mind I havent tried this with the EEs, so maybe that works no longer now.

Theres also dragons which are a problem for different reasons.


There are multiple balors in BG1/BG2. I only remember the one in the BG1 addon Tales of the Sword Coast to be a challenge, which IIRC is the first one. I think I needed two or three tries ? First attempt was going in unprepared and getting completely obliterated, super fast. My strategy the last time I did it, with a Paladin, was simply to use basically all the buffing potions I had accumulated at that point. It was still far from easy riding, I think even with that my next attempt failed, but then I managed.

Again I havent tried this with the EEs either. I had my first EE walkthrough going until visiting Candlekeep for the second time and have started the TotSC dungeon. Then BG3 was released.

i dont give a fuck about dnd crap, bg3 its turn bassed crpg