Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Rumors of Higher Difficulty Mode coming...

Whatever Larian does, the game is and will remain too easy.
When your design philosophy is to have as much STUFF (too much scrolls, too much potions, too much magical items, too much gold etc....) in the game world to hoard and have a UI that ENABLES you to hoard stuff (unlimited inventory) ...well...difficulty goes down the drain.

Then don't hoard items you say?
I say then what is the point of having difficulty modes? Just make it ONE difficulty and tell your players to play a certain way if they want more challenge ROFL. Man DEVs have it easy these days.

I disagree that using Withers as you do to solo encounters trivializes encounters. The very fact that you have to respect for every encounter would seem to suggest the opposite. That to solo encounters is not a trivial affair as it requires planning, tactics and the optimal spec that can only be achieved by respecing for each individual encounter.

Secondly if you believe your videos do trivializes encounters why does that matter to you? I am sure you do not feel that your videos are trivial achievements, lacking the “satisfaction of beating a difficult encounter”.

It seems to me you are quite adept at imposing your own set of difficulty rules Solo, and I am sure you did not play through with a full party respecing for each encounter. No respec game mode would not increase satisfaction over just not respecing. Neither would solo game mode have been more satisfying than your self-imposed soloing.

While a no Withers option is not going to satisfy most players that are finding tactician lacking in challenge, it is the sort of additional option I would have expected to be present at release. Another would be scrolls restricted to classes able to and have the level to cast the spell.

I think I understand what the real problem is. Tactician is actually the easy mode. Larian must have mistakenly swapped explorer and tactician modes. When I play on balanced, I come against opponents who have this condition where no matter how hard you hit them, you can't do more than 1 HP damage (during 5 turns or so -- I forgot the name of this thingy). There are baddies that blink in and out of invisibilityall in the same turn and even with "see invisible" on you, you can't see them. Many rise up again with 1 HP after you kill them and can have an extra round on you. I get hold person cast on me, or area spells that prevent me from taking any action or moving. There are fights where new enemies appear every turn and where the goal is to survive, or protect something or someone else, for x turns.
Apparently none of that is present in tactician ?

Yes, they are there. You get these threads all the time with games. After you have played the game enough and understand the fights you will encounter and the optimal set of moves and/or spells these become much easier fights.

I'm very new to the game, and I get surprised frequently and enjoy the challenges of understanding the new twists a fight may offer or using a new spell. I'm only at mid act 2 on tactician and have had a lot of fun with many challenges. I've never even played a DnD game of any kind. So I'm even enjoying understanding the roll mechanics.

I've played DOS2 through 3 times on tactician and I find every fight to be very straightforward and simple to beat.

Pillars of Eternity has an achievement where you had to defeat all enemies on Expert(No UI hints during Spell use, so you risk damaging friendlies, for example), Trial of Iron(One save), Path of the Dammed(a level above Tactician which has beefed stats and increased numbers of enemies in most fights). Only .2% of players have the achievement.

They also have a solo version of the achievement.

If you included many of the suggestions included in this thread and beefed up stats I think you could have a new level above current tactician which was much more challenging.