Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3: Balance problems

Hello!

I would like to express my opinion on the balance problems that I discovered early on in the game.

1. First problem. Merchants receive updates to their goods and their stock of money every time a character levels up. At the same time, Withers allows you to change the class of any character an infinite number of times. The cost of changing a class is 100 gold. As you understand, in fact it is not necessary to change the class. You can simply restore the same character. The consequences are that every time after such a “class change” (in fact, a “character rebirth”) the player gets the opportunity to go to the merchants and steal money from them. Usually these are amounts from 400 to 600 gold, which are updated every time, even if the last time you completely cleaned out the merchant's pockets. Then the player can repeat the process: change class -> steal money -> change class -> steal money -> ... and so on ad infinitum. The same applies to goods. As a result, the player receives an infinite amount of money and any goods. In addition, the player gets the opportunity to wait for exactly the weapon that he needs, because during each such cycle, merchants have a specific weapon in its advanced version. You may not see this weapon at the merchant in this "cycle", but during the next "cycle" of "class change" you can expect that such a weapon (or spell) will appear.

2. Second problem. When characters with magical abilities "change class" (as I say, "rebirth"), their Spell Slots are restored, even if they were previously spent. This means that after spending Spell Slots, I don't need to restore them through Long Rest. You can simply go to Withers and "change classes" by restoring Spell Slots. The result is that, theoretically, characters with Spell Slots do not need Long Rest to restore their mana points. Let me explain that I identified this problem using the example of two characters - my main one (he is a Ranger) and a character named Gale (he is a Wizard). At the same time, such a problem was not identified with a mercenary named Brinna Brightsong (she is a Bard): when I used one Spell Slot of Brinna, and then “reborn” her (“changed class”), she was “reborn” with one empty (used) Spell Slot. It is possible that the problem only affects the “main characters”, and not the mercenaries.

3. Third problem. Resurrecting a character from Withers costs only 200 gold. It's too cheap, especially considering the problem mentioned above with the "infinite" amount of money.

My suggestions for improving the balance:

1. Limit the possibility of changing class. One option: you can increase the cost of each class change. Let the price double, or better yet, triple with each “iteration”.

2. Fix the problem with the restoration of Spell Slots after changing classes for all characters.

3. Significantly (at least three times) increase the cost of resurrection from Withers, as well as the cost of resurrection scrolls.

4. Significantly limit the cycles of updating goods and money from merchants. At a minimum, you should stop making this update never-ending. For example, you can tie the updating of goods solely to the first increasing the levels of the main characters (but not mercenaries), and the goods should not be updated when levels are increased again in the event of a class change.

5. In addition, I would recommend introducing a limit on the cost of theft, as was done in Divinity Original Sin 2

Overall, I consider BG3 to be one of the best games in video game history. My suggestions are rather perfectionism.

P.S. I'm new to BG3, so I'll ask for no spoilers.

1 - yes, increase cost each time exponentially;
2 - I did not know of this exploit
3 - yup, something like 2000 would be nice;
4 - no idea. Could be linkd to Long Rests, maybe?

About the second point: I was kind of surprised that reskilling restored my spellslots too - otoh it also removed all my buffs as well (like the lvl6 feast and additional health from Shart) so that seemed a fair exchange. I mean you are either spending 400 coins, click through all the level-up pop-ups and rearrange your spellbooks in order for your party to fake long rest or spend 40/80 resources. I feel long resting sounds much preferable.

Agree on all points. Also:

6. Don't let characters without the skill read scrolls. So no arcane spellcasting capability, is no scrolls usage all.

Yes, I agree that a long rest is preferable in this case (as characters level up), but at early levels it is not so bad. Besides, the main thing is not how much worse or better the Long Rest is, but that the creators of the game simply allowed an exploit, and this exploit must be corrected.

Exactly!

How about dumping ESL?
I really see no reason why my Bard 6/Cleric 2 should have access to lvl4 spells. There should be a price for multiclassing ...

There's a difference between an "Exploit" and the titles aforementioned "Balance problems"

It's not a balance problem that you can quasi-long rest by respeccing. Given how easy it is to simply just long rest, with times you're not able to long rest (Such as in the Mindflayer Colony) you can't access Withers to respec either.

It's not a balance problem that you can steal potentially infinite money from vendors because just normally playing the game can give you far more gold than is required to purchase every single item in the game.

It's not a balance problem that Withers will revive characters for 200g because you get so many resurrection scrolls that he's not actually needed. Not to mention the plethora of vendors that sell scrolls for about the same price (Which even if you're not respeccing to force restocks will provide ample amounts of them) and again... Normal gameplay will net you literally tens of thousands of spare gold.

Literally none of these "Problems" actually provide any benefit to someone to who goes out of their way to use them over the normal game systems. Maybe they're unintended and can be considered "Exploits" but they're hardly balance problems.

Maybe if gold was actually a limiting factor outside the first 5 minutes of the game, maybe... But then you can just have a Hireling Bard play some songs to generate infinite gold so it becomes a non-issue anyway...

There is a price. You don't progress a class' spell levels when you multiclass.

Your Bard 6/Cleric 2 has level 4 spell slots, but no actual level 4 spells. You can upcast your level 1-3 spells to level 4, but you don't get actual level 4 spells.

The only time you can bypass this is with Wizard. Since they can learn any spell to the level of their spell slots from scrolls. So a Cleric 11 Wizard 1 can have their Wizard learn level 6 Wizard spells (Of course, they'll have very few spaces to memorize Wizard spells and each class uses their own casting stat so in this case the Cleric spells will use WIS while the Wizard spells will use INT)

The Resurrection scrolls at 200 gp are insane as well - one zero missing, IMO ...
True that Withers is actually really needed only when you get shoved into a chams or lake, though.
Thinking of it - add money cost to spells, for their invisible ingredients.
Oh ... indeed, no lvl4 spells but slots. And true for Wizards - my Wizard 6/Ranger 2 Gale has one lvl4 SS and knows quite a few lvl4 Spells.

Wizard 1 gives you exactly 1 + Int modifier Wizard spells on the bar, doesn't it? I'd also say that the fun from and the price of multiclassing comes from making weird things work. Among the above mentioned penalties there are also resource management penalties. Full Wizards can restore some of their spell slots, if you only have one or two levels in Wizard, you can only restore one level 1 spell slot and you might have fewer resources of the special resource of your other class as well. You'll have to long rest or drink angelic slumber more often .... or go through the above mentioned reskill game, which I'd personally would not want to do on a multiclass.

I agree with this. I think respeccing was introduced to experiment and get a feel of the different classes. Not to use it as a campaign tool. I respecced once, turning my entire party into bards just so I can hear them play as a "band" together. Something which would be impossible to hear without the respec option. But I didn't use it to alter the campaing I was playing.

I don't want to offend anyone, but when I read some comments about the game being "too easy" or "too exploitable"' it makes me think of a crossword puzzle magazine that has the solutions in the back. And then people complaining "I copied all the solutions in the crosswords, it's much too easy. They should remove these solutions". But they are not there to be copied, but to check after you finished the puzzle and couldn't complete it what was missing. So you could learn and get better.
Similar to this game. Play it like you want. If you want to throw potions to heal everyone, do it, but then don't complain that it's the game's fault that you did it. If you take long rest after every battle. Good for you, but why complain afterwards that it's too easy to take long rest if you can just not do it ? Or, ow I don't want to resurrrect my 3 dead companions, but I have 600 gold pieces, so I must do it. Oh if the price had been s 6000 gp then I would have to raise only 1, or 2 or maybe all 3 anyway...

I completely disagree on #1 and #3. The price needs to be obtainable for low levels, because that is when you are most likely to die or make better choices as you learn the game.

As for the others, it's a single player game, not a multiplayer competitive game. If you want to "exploit," it doesn't hurt anyone except yourself. If you find those mechanics unwelcome... don't do them? The crossword puzzle example above is an excellent analogy.

Let other people play how they want to. I daresay most players never even considered manipulating the game to that extent.

The crossword puzzle analogy above is accepted, but my suggestions are a matter of product excellence. Part of this perfection is making it so that you can't look at the end of the crossword puzzle. You will say: well, don’t look, why bother the creators of the game? I answer: let’s say, I personally won’t do this, but only because I understand that this is an exploit. Someone else may think that this is not an exploit, but a game design. What I mean is that the game creators are responsible for the extent to which the player can manipulate the game. The fewer opportunities to manipulate, the higher quality the game can be considered.

Of course, the player can independently complicate the rules of the game for himself, thereby “correcting” random exploits, but it will be better if the rules of the game are set by the creators of the game: they have much more opportunities to test balance and mechanics in order to optimize all the components of the game.

Everything said concerns exploits in general, and not just this specific one. I believe that this section on the forum was created for the purpose of the game authors collecting all the information about exploits and then preparing a more advanced version of the BG3 game (and not only this game, given that many mechanics are repeated in various games of this company)

When you talk about respeccing as a way to explore the capabilities of classes, I would agree, but I believe that one of the important parts of any good game is that some aspects of that game remain in the fog unless you decide to play it differently. In a word, there should always be some kind of “secret” - a path that you never took, because that is the price of choice in a role-playing game. Ideally, an RPG should imitate real life, where you don't actually have the ability to "replay" at all. This is why I highly approve of the single save effect in Honor Mode. In general, it is a matter of taste whether to enjoy the effect of the film The Butterfly Effect, but I personally do not approve of this option.

My further research into exploits led me to this conclusion: in fact, the game can be played without long rests. How? It turned out that the bug with "infinite restoration" of slots is wider than I thought. It concerns not only Gale and not only magicians. It applies to any slots for any characters in general. At first I thought that only Gale restores slots, and other mage characters do not. Then I found out that this is not so. Yes, if you spend magic slots on any other character, and then immediately send him to “change class” with the same class, the slots will not be restored. But if you change the mage class to a class where there are no magic slots, and then change the class again, but to a mage, then all the slots will be restored. However, this is only part of the problem. Another problem concerns Bards. Their ability to provide the team with a short rest is also restored after the described procedure. Given the above, theoretically it turns out that the team may not take a long rest at all (except in the interests of the plot). One of the consequences of this problem may be that you can save on potions (drink once and go out for as long as you need). Another consequence is unjustified combinations like this: before the battle, your mage gives buffs (that do not require concentration) to another character, and then this mage goes to the camp, changes class to warrior and joins the battle as a warrior.

I strongly recommend that the game creators rework this aspect. I hope that in the “Golden Edition” we will see different game mechanics in this matter. My suggestion is this:

1. Make a limit on the cost of theft for each specific merchant (as in Original Sin 2). It's strange that this mechanic wasn't included in BG3.

2. Limit the possibility of changing class (as you wish, but it is possible - through a progressive increase in the cost of each class change cycle).

3. Fix problems with restoring slots after changing classes.

If these changes are not introduced, the balance of the game will seriously suffer. For example, there is almost no point in accumulating food for a long vacation. Moreover, there is no point in hoarding any goods at all. Why, if you can just endlessly steal from a child who won’t even call the guards?

The whole "if you respec it equates to long rest for your spell slots" is a weird "exploit" to complain about, because simply pushing the rest button is an EASIER and quicker way to sidestep the process and obtain the same result.

It's like complaining that a billionaire with infinite credit can easily obtain borrowed money from another source. I mean, yeah, life is unfair, but in the end "infinite + something" remains functionally the same as infinite.

I see it the same way. It would be much too restrictive if you had to play in early stages without all the companions because you could not afford resurrections. 200 gold is quite a lot at start if you don't exploit the game. I don't want to steal from vendors because I don't want to steal. Should the game be catering only to thiefs and exploiters?

And easy respeccing? If you don't want it because it makes things too easy, don't do it. Don't experiment. Play with the char you don't like or without the spell or ability you missed. Don't assume that others do or like it the same way. If you knew the game by heart and have your perfect char, don't demand restrictions by the game for testing chars which would obviously not restrict you.