Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What's an exploit? (What do you consider cheese in BG3?)

I want to do a run without using any exploits. But then I start wondering, what would be considered an exploit?

What do you consider to be an exploit in the game?

EDIT: I'm looking to avoid cheese, so I'm wondering what you consider to be cheese in the game.

To me exploit is using some glitch to win a fight that is not supposed to be possible .

Like finding some way to get into a position where the enemies can’t reach you and just freezes and you can just sit there and kill them one by one without them doing anything .


Or using barrels to win fights in fights where barrels aren’t mean to exists. Like brining a lot of them into House of Hope and using them to blast the fights with one shoot without using any skills or spells or strategies from your characters.

I personally play the game without using any consumables and just utilize what my builds are meant to do- if I am a rogue I utilize stealth / sneak attacks , if I am a fighter I make unstoppable tank etc.

This might be splitting hairs but I think there's a difference between an exploit and cheese but the line is pretty thin. In WotR it's possible get an armor class of 70 + by combining classes with AC bonuses that aren't mean to stack. In the infinity engine games "attack the darkness" - throwing fireballs in the fog of war areas is an exploit - you know the enemies are there but they can't see you and so can't react.

Barelmancy is cheese because the devs put them in the game to be used in as an instant win button.

Which raises the question - what are the exploits in BG3?

Hmm, I would say an exploit is a bug that allows a player to trivialize content to an extreme amount. Cheese is exploiting (hah!) known powerful game mechanics to trivialize content.

Cheese = intended

Exploited = unintended

At least that's my current opinion based on the 30 seconds I thought about it.

I suppose I meant "cheese" by "exploits," but I can see where one would draw a distinction.

To rephrase, I'm looking to avoid cheese, which makes me question what folks would consider to be cheese in BG3.

Well for example I soloed the House of Grief on Tactician by utilizing stealth and hit and run and people said I I was cheesing the encounter :

Your example is actually what inspired me to make this thread. I'd like to see if we can get a sort of a consensus from the folks here about what's cheese and what's not.

There is no consensus.

People will say that whatever works for them is fair and if someone makes a better strategy then it’s cheesing stuff using OP builds, OP gear, OP consumables, OP whatever they use.

Play as you enjoy it and don’t look for validation, in the example above I also destroyed the encounter with a face smash fighter/ warlock and people still said it’s cheesing as I was using OP defensive skills and gear so the enemies couldn’t hurt me lol.

Here's an example that I just saw right now. An exploit that allows you to get "15 4th level smites and 40 sorcery points."

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/17ut5f1/yall_creat_spell_slot_on_sorcerer_works_with/

And people have fun with it, great. I confess that used the attack the dark with a few beholders in BG2

I feel like I would show up to Cheese club, but lactose intolerant and skeeved by the dairy lol.

To me, if there's a good reason to scumily reload six times just to see a chunking animation or something interesting happen, that's always worth it!

But yeah I guess Exploits would be abusing the meta and glitches. Cheese would be like every solution to the Drizzt fight from BG1 that didn't involve kiting around in an absolute panic with hasty boots and an absurd number of arrows lol.

Or herding Gnolls around with CC spells until having to do the above anyway hehe

Showcased example of cheese would have been using invulnerability and reverse damage via shield to make him basically kill himself which felt pretty fondue.

Showcased example of exploit, would be initiating convo click to make him stop running, then ungrouping/dismissing the rest of the party in place, to body block/trap Drizzt with 5 other party members while Charname just sniped him laughed.

Both were totally viable in my view, depending on how much time you feel like spending in the game. To each there own I guess. I doubt there'd be an achievement for save scum splunking, but I know in my heart, that's true BG and also part of the fun. Ideally we get a cool Mode or a cool Mod that improves computer tactics to the point where the cheese doesn't feel too cheesy. The only thing I'd hold myself to is maybe RP related stuff, or perhaps self nerfing Haste so it's only used for attacks, or avoiding the craziest consumables and scrolls, but even that's tough. I can keep that up for a little while, most other stuff I fail at. I'm too impulsive I think hehe

In my opinion nothing and everything.
It would be not called cheese if the game would be harder.

For example before beating Grym almost every encounter can one shoot a single player character that isn't useing some kind of strategy.
After Grym ( and getting immunity to crit) the game falls of to Marianna Trench and ppl can facetank everything . Also later enemies have lower and lower damage range. For example a Dragon can do the same amount of damage as the Bullet. The difference between the two is the lvl and and when ppl are facing them. For example 60 dmg from the Bullet is really common but at this time ppl are just lvl 5-6. With around 40-60hp.

Another good example is Gnoll (lvl2-3)archers and goblin (lvl 2-3)archers vs Flaming fist archers lvl 10. A gnoll archer can critt for 1d8 +4x3=30-72 hp loss. A goblin archer have fury of the weak what is adding +1d 6 and most of them have 16-18 dexterity + fire arrow thats mean the can do 1d6+6+1d6+1d4+ burning with crit= 19-48. And the flaming fists have 1d8+4 and I don't saw them shooting fire arrows. It is insane downgrade in difficulty and at that pont mybe even all of pt members are already immune to critical with a bare minimum 60+ hp.


And I think ppl are getting use to this difficulty in act 1. So they start to hoard broken stuff. What isn't suppose to be broken. And because act 1 is long and it takes 20-40 hours ppl are adapting. And useing everything what s available.

But when they are going down to the Trench it starts to feel cheating cheese. To that point when ppl are even questioning companions and multiplayer. And that is definitely intended.

Probably. At least we have an opportunity to present some more common and some rare and well aged cheese.

For example you can spawn legendary maces from the gods by respeccing companions/hirelings into high-level Clerics. Oh and while they are at it they can cast warding bond on characters you want in your party. The bond stays active even when the cleric who casts it is removed from the party later.

An exploit is IMO using a bug, e.g. sending a trader's wares to Camp.

If you think we can agree at least on what's a bug and what's in the game by design, then you most likely haven't seen this Q&A yet (sry can't embed cause time marker gets lost).

Watching it again reminded me: it's just inevitable to be one's own DM. And THIS IS NOT FUN PERIOD. Ha ha.

Damn, that is some creative abuse of game mechanics!

But yeah, I would call it cheese, but who cares? To solo the game you gotta be creative!

I know , so I made a new build that’s the “no cheese” legal way.



So my first video is the cheesy way to solo it and one is the non cheesy way !

Are you just advertising your youtube channel..?

I don’t have a YouTube channel or any followers or social media in general.

I make this for fun to troll the people who posts stuff like how fight X is impossible and who accuse the people who prove them wrong of cheating or “cheesing” the said fights .

Things I think we all mostly tend to agree are cheesy:

1. Camp wizard, like a transmuter making potions, handing out stones, casting spells like longstrider
2. Camp cleric, casting spells like aid and warding bond, etc...
3. Setting up barrels before the fight to ensure victory
4. Save scumming to get the desired roll
5. ???

Things I've heard called cheesy, but I'm not sure if I agree:

1. Attacking from stealth. --it seems like some classes are built to do this. Avoiding this tactic feels like it's discounting the strength and flavor of certain classes, like the rogue or the warlock with devil's sight. That said, the tactic is incredibly powerful in the game, which makes the "cheesy" accusation understandable. This is a tough one for me. I'm really not sure how I feel about it.
2. Powerful class combinations, like the Paladin/Warlock or the Rogue/Gloomstalker. I see the strength of the classes, but they're legitimate combinations. I'm not sure I consider them so much cheesy as I consider the game to be flawed when it comes to the max difficulty level. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if the AI could better handle player tactics.
3. The use of certain equipment, like the luminous armor. I just can't help but think the equipment is fair game.

Things I no longer use in the game because I consider them to be too much:

1. Speed potions,
2. Haste spells,
3. Strength elixirs

I'd mostly agree about the save scumming bit, except that BG3 seems to lend itself to almost needing to do it.

I can't think of other instances that are quite that dire, but there are a lot of places where one inconvenient roll can really mess with the rest of the game. That's D&D to a certain extent, so I guess it's up to each person to decide how faithful to dice rolls one remains. All four of my party members failed a relatively easy perception check on some triggers to open a secret door. Without that door Fortunately, in that case, you didn't have to perceive the triggers to use them, but in another spot I might have been truly dead in the water.

And, I'll admit, sometimes I just want the shiny, cheese be damned...

Your list seems pretty spot-on, though. I admit to using speed potions for combat-class Tavs who don't have very many attacks, but I'm willing to consider that as cheesy. I kind of want to add resuscitation scrolls to the list, but the over-under on that one seems evenly split. (There are way too many corpses littering Faerun for revivification to be as simple as reading words off a piece of paper.)