Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Elixirs of Strength are the problem, not haste

The bonuses granted by elixir of hill and cloud giant and strength unbalance the game. Instead they could grant plus three and six strength respectively.

Please revert haste to grant a full round of attacks, on honor mode. It is unnecessarily punishing toward melee and makes me feel foolish for playing a melee class over a magic spammer. Alternately, you could make it not a grant a bonus spellcast, so at least the nerf hits both casters and fighters. As the spell would be significantly powered down you could then remove the concentration requirement.

Both unbalance the game. It's a tragedy that the best Strength based builds have no attribute points in Strength and slurp potions or use a stick made from a stool. The potions should not last till long rest and should not be so easily available.

Haste in Honour mode may never ever be changed again to the insane opness it has in the other modes. I don't care the slightest wether magic or physical users are stronger in the game (a silly question), but Haste leads to stupid combat design decisions and had to be changed. Thank you, Larian. I too would appreciate a further change in Honour mode towards true 5e rules, so there should be no second cast possible.

When talking about balance, the worst offender in the game cannot remain unnoticed: Tavern Brawler has to be changed by all means. While thrower builds with Tavern Brawler are somewhat lacking in high difficulty modded playthroughs, they rule the easier modes including Honour mode too much.

Its a trap option ...
You save some points ... but loose option to have any potion on yourself.

A more than acceptable trade for most.

This is the biggest exploit in the game, next to tavern brawler.

In my opinion, they should be changed from elixirs to potions, lasting no more than 10 rounds.

I mean ... certainly, if we are talking about that one that gives you 27.
Thats just ridiculous.

Still ... kinda acceptable for me, since we DONT HAVE BELTS IN THIS GAME!!!
Ehm. O:)

But for others, i dunno ... i find Elixir of Bloodlust infinitely stronger, than meere 21 ... especialy since my Barbarian reached 22 Str in Act II.

Also ... honestly, where else would you give your stats? O_o
I dont even bother with Con too much on Barbarians, since Adamantine Medium armor that negate Criticals is simply too sweet to ignore ... and therefore 14 Dex is perfectly fine aswell ... and since once you take any boots, gloves, or helmet that are labeled as any type of armour, your bonus is gone ... so, your options are seriously (and unneessarily) limited. :-/

I would be perfectly fine with that ...
If we would have belts that would work in this way.

But it just dont feel like priority to me.

CON for more health. DEX for more initiative.

WIS for saves. CHR to be a better face (Also, useful if utilizing racial spells)

Overall, there's plenty of options for sinking your stat points if you can ignore your main stat because you're able to set it to a value anyway. Which is something that can be abused with INT and DEX too with the Headband of Intellect and Gloves of Dexterity to get 19 INT and 18 DEX respectively (In Act 1 no less...). At least the CON item is Act 3 so you need to invest points into that stat for most of the game (While having 23 CON isn't as impactful as having a stat that affects attacks boosted)

The Headband of Intellect has a pretty major nerf. One of the primary reasons for high intelligence is to have more spells as a wizard (especially when you can dump one or two levels into wizard and learn from scrolls). The number of spells is calculated from the character's actual intelligence, before the headband adjustment is added. I tried using it on Shadowheart to dip into Wizard spells, and her low Intelligence made this not worthwhile.

Hm?If you open the spellbook after ,with the headband on, you can add the spells manually with intelligence as 17.The only drawback that on skill checks is -1 from 8 intellect then the +3 from the headband makes it actually +2.

If anything I think strength (and other attribute) based characters should have more ways to permanently raise a stat, maybe like the mirror that can give +2 have some kind of blood magic that can drain a stat for another to raise it beyond 20…. Maybe even at a terrible conversion, like 2-3 points lost to raise a stat by 1.



Either way there shouldn’t be an easy way for a character to have more strength than a character built around strength. But I don’t expect this to change.

It is a PvE game that is also story-based and, compared to today's standard games, extremely unfriendly to beginners.

I am familiar with DnD, and as I have read here, so are some others. Of course, we use things to their limit, but an average player certainly wouldn’t run to the merchant after every long rest to buy new strength potions or create an extra NPC dedicated to alchemy.

These are all things power gamers do, and you need to engage deeply with the game for that, which only enthusiasts do.

All the discussions about something being too powerful are dumb. Is it too powerful for you? Yes! Then just don’t use it if it bothers you.

It's not very unfriendly to beginners. Given that even on it's most difficult mode, the game is trivially easy (Yes, even with janky unoptimized builds that a beginner would use)


This is a poor argument.

Using "It's a PvE game" or "Just don't use it" as an excuse for poor balance is not reflective of good game design.

Even in a PvE game, things should be as the developer intended - So anything that is overly powerful should be brought down.

To not mention how overpowered things can preclude more innocuous uses of things. Like, what if someone wanted to pick Tavern Brawler specifically to make using improvised weapons useful. But they can't because doing so will completely break throwing weapons and unarmed attacks by making them stupidly powerful.

Also, while this game is PvE, it's still multiplayer. What if you don't use OP things, but someone you play with online does and ruins the experience for you because they're excessively more powerful than anyone else in your party?

PvE games should be subject to balancing. So things are within the designers accepted parameters.

Cognitive distortion. This is a psychological effect that occurs in all people and leads to a distorted perception. In this case, we are additionally talking about the curse of knowledge, as the perceptual distortion is caused by pre-existing knowledge.

As a result, experienced people (and thus usually all the people who are active in the forum) cannot understand what the game is like for a true beginner or how it is played without prior knowledge. I belong to a larger group of players and have therefore been able to observe the difference between experienced DnD players and newcomers. And yes, the game theoretically provides all the information, but you still have to look it up yourself, which is more difficult than one might think due to the enormous amount of information.

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The second part of your message is very interesting.

You emphasize that "it's a PvE game" is not a good justification for poor balancing and that it should be the way the developers intended. But where do you get the right to decide what the developers intended? It was implemented in the game as it is, so that must have been the intention, right? And your example doesn't make it any better!

So, you want to take Tavern Brawler to fight with improvised weapons or to make use of them, which indicates that you want to fight with them. However, this should not work because thrown weapons and unarmed weapons become overpowered.

1. You are implying that improvised weapons are too weak since you can only use them if you have a feat.
2. Someone who wants to fight with improvised weapons will do so, so why would they fight unarmed? Throwing is such a specific action that most people probably won't do it.
3. The feat treats improvised weapons and unarmed attacks equally. Why, then, should unarmed attacks suddenly be so much stronger than improvised weapons? You must have mixed something up or missed some information because what you probably meant to say is that monks who focus on strength would become overpowered. And now to the next point.

Let's take Tavern Brawler and give it to a wizard!
OP?
We give it to a fighter!
OP?
We give it to a paladin!
OP?
We give it to a monk!
OP?

The answer to all these questions would be no! None of the mentioned classes gain an advantage from the feat without assistance. Wizards can't make use of it. Paladins, as far as I know, need a weapon. Fighters sacrifice too much, and monks need dexterity, not strength. Without equipment, the feat is unusable, and if you start nerfing because of equipment or equipment combinations, you could patch half the game into oblivion until everything is bad.

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Final point.

Another example I can't understand.
Yes, it's not a single-player game; you can play it in co-op. But please give proper examples, not ones that only apply to experienced players. How many beginners or regular players join a lobby of person XY to experience the story with someone they don't even know? How many who want to play the game want random players to join their game?

Your example is so detached from reality that it could come from the multiverse.

And if you're going to come back with the argument that you play with friends and it can happen there... do us a favor and save your time. Use that time instead to tell your friends not to play overpowered builds!

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Conclusion.

The mentioned issues regarding overpowered mechanics are a problem for experienced players who exploit game mechanics to become stronger. The combination of knowledge, knowledge, and more knowledge creates the feeling that something is too powerful, whereas it wouldn’t be too strong for an average player. Most players wouldn't even use the Tavern Brawler feat without the help of the internet. Similarly, strength potions, which can be easily obtained in the game, are consumables and are generally recognized by players as valuable, so they are only used when a battle seems difficult, even if the potion lasts until the next long rest. Furthermore, less experienced players won't breeze through battles as we do, so they will need to rest more frequently, making the "until the next long rest" effect less significant than for someone who can handle 6, 7, or 8 battles without resting.

A general tip for all players who believe they are good at something...

The moment you think you are good at something, you are no longer the benchmark for other players. This is why I do not see myself as a benchmark, as I belong to the group of good players in every game I actively play and engage with the game actively. While I find the game easy, think there are too few enemies, or that enemy X is too weak, regular players might struggle significantly to defeat that same enemy. As mentioned at the beginning, this is a cognitive distortion caused by the curse of knowledge. While it can't be completely eliminated, it can at least be taken into account.

I am one of those people that fall under the criteria to be completely new to this genre and type of game with zero D&D experience both from lore and combat perspectives alike, was not until on my 3rd playthrough I discovered how you could fully take advantage of items and elixers that provide extra stats until the next long rest, so none of these "balancing" issues had any negative impact to the enjoyment of my game.

I look at them as extra ways to just have fun with the game much like we got those explosive barrels, oil barrels, fireworks and I could also just say there might be others new like me coming to this game feeling quite oblivious to these "issues" apparently which to me just cries to take more fun out from the game.


To give an example of how new I was, I struggled with combat in the easiest of difficulty mode but after having taken the time to learn how it all works, how optimize a build, how saving throws work, now I can finish the game very tactically on honour mode with great confidence and make it feel like its too easy without resolving to these methods mentioned on this topic.

It was back between August-December period when I played thiss game while learning the mechanics to give perspective.

Yes, because all forum users started their very first run with 1000 hours of playtime...

What an absurd notion... Forum users, can and have, played the game with no prior knowledge.

Some may have been familiar with DnD before (As much use as that is given Larian's bastardization of the rulesets) but not everyone was.


Developers intend what they intend. If they change something, that is their intention. Ergo, if something is nerfed for being too powerful, it's their intention that they didn't want the thing to be so powerful.

Claiming "It's a PvE game!" doesn't absolve them of this, nor does it impact the developers intention if they do change things.

Also, as far as "It was implemented in the game as it is" Larian have ALREADY nerfed several power outliers because they DIDN'T INTEND for them to be so strong. Showing that despite how it was initially implemented, it was not working in the way they intended. For example, it used to be that Handcrossbows in your offhand would always benefit from your full stat bonus (Unlike melee weapons which require the Two-Weapon Fighting style from a limited selection of classes) which created abusable builds where people simply used dual Handcrossbows with full stat bonuses.


Which they are. I know, I've tried to use them.


Because improvised weapons are not always available. As is indicated by the "Improvised" nature of improvised weapons... So something else needs to be done and a character focusing on improvised weapons might not carry an actual weapon ergo, end up using unnarmed.

Also, throwing is not that specific an action. Given the amount of early game gear tailored towards throwing weapons (Also, when actually using improvised weapons, you might find yourself simply wanting to throw an improvised weapon at a ranged enemy instead of running over to them and clobbering them with it - Trust me, I've actually tried to use improvised weapons as a main method of combat)


Because unarmed attacks are more readily available than improvised weapons AND unarmed attacks have their own attribute scaling as well that is combined with the Tavern Brawler bonus (While Improvised Weapons have no innate scaling)


The answer would be yes. Tavern Brawler on any class gives that class a weapon that is far more powerful than any other weapon in the game provided they have the stats to use it (Which is limited by it being Strength based so you're less likely to see a brawling Wizard... Outside of Elixir of Strength shenans or some weird builds)


All of them get an advantage from the feat.


Yes they can. They can pump strength and start punching things harder than their Cantrips (Club of Hill Giant Strength and Elixirs of Strength can both aid in that)


Paladin's don't NEED a weapon. They require one to smite, but they're perfectly capable of bashing things in with unarmed and using their spell slots on... Their spells.


Fighters sacrifice nothing? WTF are you on.

They even have a subclass that directly assists them with thrown builds to boot, allowing them to turn any weapon into a returning weapon...


Monks don't need Dexterity. They literally have a bonus where they can use their WIS for their AC so they DON'T need DEX and can still have good AC. Nothing on the class requires Dexterity.


No. A feat that buffs UNARMED attacks actually doesn't need equipment. In fact, part of it's insane power is that it doesn't require any equipment at all. All it requires is stats, namely Strength and you can go punch things harder than any weapon.

The lack of equipment required is why Elixirs of Strength are so busted with it. With just a feat and an Elixir (Purchasable from vendors and lasting until long rest) a character can get the best attacks in the game.


Quite a lot of beginners and regular players join up with random people to play co-op. Don't take my word for it, there's plenty of comments about it across various discussion areas for the game.


That's more indicative of your entire "Argument" to be honest. You've yet to actually justify any of the "Claims" you make besides "I come from a larger playerbase" like no shit... So does everyone else?


Yes, experienced players are the main ones who will be affected by overpowered mechanics, as they will quickly figure out how to abuse them. It however, does not preclude less experienced players from stumbling into such things by themselves.

Tavern Brawler is easily exploited by simply using it for things the original TT feat didn't intend (Yay, thanks DnD knowledge you're so helpful in Larian's game...) Tavern Brawler as a feat was simply meant to boost the viablity of the not very good or practical Improvised Weapon system. Larian then decided to make it also affect actually useful methods of combat for no reason and the result is it breaks those actually useful combat methods by applying a massive boost to them unnecessarily. This is why the Feat is so out of line with literally every other feat in the game, where they either provide a small bonus with a stat bump or provide a big, but very niche, bonus to something not very useful.

The closest any other feat gets to the power of Tavern Brawler, would be Spell Sniper. Due to its ability to give any class the strongest Cantrip in the game (Eldritch Blast) and have it function as that class' spell (Meaning it uses their own spellcasting stats instead of Warlock's CHR). But even this pales in comparison to Tavern Brawler, which not only lets ANY class get powerful attacks but also for classes like Barbarian, Fighter and Monk that already have options that facilitate using Thrown Weapons or Unarmed they get a mega boost to these things.


That's the thing. I don't see myself as good at things and I don't consider my experiences to be indicative of EVERYONE'S experiences.

I do however, possess the ability to look at things (Relatively) objectively. Thanks to my experiences in the real world, I developed a sense of looking at all sides of situation.

I can look at things and maybe I find them easy, but I will recognize how someone else might not. Just like I can recognize how a beginner might interact with things in ways that aren't optimal as well as see how an experienced player might optimize such usages.

At the end of the day, Tavern Brawler is an excessively powerful feat. Yes, not everyone will use it, not everyone will abuse it. But its existence is not one that is particularly good for the overall balance of the game.

Its boost to throwing and unarmed weapons is not only out of place, both in terms of the actual DnD ruleset AND also BG3's combat as a whole (Thrown weapons and unarmed aren't weak on their own. Without Tavern Brawler you can absolutely still use thrown weapons and unarmed builds without issue - In fact Way of the Open Hand Monk can still be REALLY strong even without Tavern Brawler). But it's ease of being abused by simply... Stacking Strength (Which happens to be THE most abusable stat in the entire game - Between the Club of Strength, Elixirs of Strength, the potion in Act 2 from having Astarion bite that woman that gives permanent strength, the masks from Grymforge that provide stacking Strength bonuses, the robes in Act 2 that give +2 strength and most Feats having the option to increase Strength)

Finally,

If your argument boils down to "Newbs won't abuse it" then its nerfing isn't a problem then is it? If beginners won't use it because they don't know it's strong then they'd be unaffected by its power being decreased. Meanwhile, experienced players won't have this broken tool sitting there waiting to be abused. Just like with every other power outlier that got nerfed (Besides Haste which only got nerfed in Honour Mode and is still Larian's own design of broken in other difficulties)

Don't like 'em don't use 'em. Simple.

Well yeah I mean sure, there are no problems, only lackluster solutions! hehe

Sorry I know, I know, but it's really the same thing as barrels right? I think we need to get at why this stuff is here, like functionally, what is it really meant to do? My first assumption seemed to be that STR elixirs were there for mainly for the gish builds or for players who delight in the min-max power fantasy of convenience. Although honestly, on that front I think it's still more about giving grizzled players a way to ignore encumbrance and blast past any encounter, so we can carry those barrels around with ease lol. In a game where the answer to any dilemma can potentially be high yield kabooms, who are the kabooms really for? I think they're probably for me, just like I assume everything in BG3 is a totally bespoke one-off and catering to my specific whims exclusively, but only in specific contexts. I'll give an example from last night...

The scenario, honorably slain by my own impatience and reckless impulsiveness, as usual lol... Thanks 3 o'clock planning!



Choosing to save Dame Aylin, not because Shadowheart said so, but because I'm too hung up on Jaheira (predictably) went about as well as we deserved. This time around Minthara missed her opening Smite and Lae'zel whiffed her soul-breaker attack against the Mind Flayer on the platform, so instead of 'the gods fighting at our side' like we'd hoped, it was a dominated Dame Aylin proceeding to just TPK the hell out of the entire crew with no mercy whatsoever. Like legit, I misty stepped on over right away, only to get smite'd into the dirt in what felt like one round. Losing a Greater Elemental, 2 Minor Elementals, those 3 primo Zombies who never even got to weigh in, dropping the haste to get completely merc'd by necromites etc. Could it have been prevented? Most assuredly, but just not the way I was rolling that time it seems hehe. It was one of those situations where one bad decision lead to another and another on my part, like a chain. Shadowheart as the last gal standing just jumped off the cliff into a pool of brine, to avoid the ignominy of being taken out by the Moon Maiden's daughter before Myrkul had even showed up to seventh seal the deal lol. So what's going to happen next time? I don't know, but it may involve some runepowder on Ketheric. Like are we gonna go JD and Veronica now, all gently with the chainsaws? This is after like 1400 hours of playing Durge on repeat since launch, so there's no one to blame, but yeah at some point, I know why those barrels are there. It's not for the newbies with the glint still in their eyes, it's for the exhausted like me, probably. STR from 8 to 21 is pretty absurd, but if we need a rationale I'm sure that's it, like aid to monty haul basically as a time saver, since it's probably just as much/often a dozen suits of heavy armor that need to get lugged around immediately after the demo detonation. There are different ways to punish players for creating builds around stuff like the OP elixirs, spells, feats, any particular item combo etc. Larian seems to enjoy the method where the principle downside for any given min-max power fantasy is mostly just the click-click tedium on the backend, or giving up some aesthetic quality and looking kinda goofy as a result, or maybe just a flat cost in Gold (usually pretty modest) so no real malus.

Haste is already very powerful, simply from the AC boost and especially the movement bonus. The extra +9m/30 ft of movement is pretty major. It takes us from Kiting around to like parasailing off the back of the ship lol. 'Provolo' rush there for sure hehe. I mean the combat areas in this game just aren't that large to begin with, so when you add stuff like longstrider or gith gummy berry jumps, flight, you're basically running circles around everything while hasted. Pop another action or attack on top of that, or meta magic to juice it even further, and it's always going to be way more hardcore than whatever the next best spell. I feel like they were able to see that a mile away though and to me it mostly feels natural. I don't feel like I'm flipping the board when my sorcerer casts quickened haste, or twin for the win, cause there's some counterbalance built-in. For the STR Elixir you don't really have that. Not a situation where you wake up the next morning enfeebled, or face an opponent who can break strength as their debuff special periodically. Like could you imagine a scenario where one of the legendary actions at the Goblin camp was just someone casting dispel magic? I mean they said it borked everything trying to implement across the board, but if you suddenly go from 21 back to 8 in the middle of combat, even if that only happens once or twice, might be enough to give players pause about building around that one on the highest challenge modes. At least with Haste it's gated by the lvl 5 power spike, and much harder to come by in the form of scrolls and such early on, where it breaks like every battle in the first act. I think an analogy would be something like acquiring the boots of speed in BG1 for an RTS type scheme like they had in that one. Once you have the boots of speed the game is sorta turned on it's head, cause everything has to start keying off the player's ability to kite at warp speeds. Again though, the can was kicked until pretty far along in that game BG1. You didn't pick up those boots of speed until the very end of the Cloakwood arc, and then they could only be used on 1 character. In this game the click heels equivalent is sorta similar. Shadowheart clicks heels, everyone gets nailed with Spirit Guardians and radiating orb hehe, the power up is probably comparable there if going by just one character becoming ultra.

With Haste you've always got that threat of concentration being broken and losing a turn to lethargy. The concentration requirement alone puts it in direct competition with half the spell list on any caster character. The potion version is much much weaker, not particularly expensive, but 2 rounds compared to 10 before going lethargic is significant. You'd have to drink 5 of those potions, so blowing 5 bonus actions as well, to get the same mileage out of a speed potion and it would probably end up costing more in GP or alchemical ingredients than the regular scroll of Haste did. Compare that to the Elixir of Hill Giant Strength, which lasts all day, competes with ASI, or equipment that commands a valuable slot, and costs less than 100 gp? Ethel replenishes them at 3 per long rest, so you could bank enough to get through the entire game by just visiting her half a dozen times early on, and stocking up to the hilts.

As an example of how it compounds, say you find camp supplies and rest restrictions not to your tastes, you can cast Goodberry with a camp follower and flip the board as soon as Withers is unlocked. The downside there is click-click tedium, because you have to push that Goodberry spell icon 20 times and watch a casting animation that's basically 1 second per berry. Then extra inventory management or party management stuff on top of that, as you have to shift the berries around to the active party before the snooze etc. Is it worth the extra click-click tedium and carpal tunneling? Probably not. Maybe at the beginning of the campaign though, when resources are low and acquiring gold to simply purchase food is similarly click-intensive with trash looting. It probably ends up being a wash after a while, like you can click Goodberry 20 times or click 20 chests in-world to find a similar amount in gold or items to barter. But at the start this undermines most of what's going by increasing the cost of camp supplies to 80 on higher difficulty settings.

If the whole point is to overcome the camp supply sink because you're a caster who replaces spellslots on long rest, then for 200 GP you can buy 80 camp supplies from a merchant in the form of supply packs. If that's too much, you can go to Withers and spend 100 GP to respec your class and restore spellslots that way instead, but again the downside is click-tedium, since that requires going through the re-levelling process from lvl 1 all the way up to whatever the current XP threshold. It ends up not being particularly time saving or cost effective in the final tally, so presumably players eventually just give up the ghost on that stuff and spend the extra gold for convenience.

What's the downside of a Strength elixir, or a Club, over just building ASI? Probably just inventory/camp management tedium again, where the player is fighting against things like encumbrance or loot organization annoyance, being disarmed and then dealing with the fallout, having to shift items around on the fly at inconvenient times. I think an example of a good stat boosting item mentioned already is the Circlet of Intellect. The reason is because they left it at 17 and because Intelligence is already the dump stat for most Classes. If the STR Elixir was set your stat to 17 rather than 21, (or 20 instead of 27 later on for the Clouds) that would feel quite different. Or if it was a potion with limited duration as mentioned above. Or even simpler just make them prohibitively expensive or rare/random. The only real issue is that they're so cheap and so reliable, otherwise we wouldn't be able to build around them to such an extent.

I think the solution for challenge is two-fold. First they need to make it aesthetically appealing to use the more mundane equipment or class abilities, over the easy or cheap enchanted stuff, the tradeoff being a nerf to overall power in exchange for control of the visualization. Then they need to jack up the prices for the consumables. An example might be something like STR when caste as a spell doesn't change anything about how your character's avatar presents visually, compared to some consumable that does the same where it maybe makes the character look funny. If I had to appear like a Hill Giant to have the STR, then I'd be less likely to exploit it if the visual was important to me. In that respect all the glowing VFX buffs that I tend to find annoying would make a certain sense if the idea was to punish us for pursuing the power ups. As we scale up we tend to look goofier and goofier, trading the glam for a +1 to whatever. This is sorta the inverse of what I'd want, where as we progress and increase in power or bonus through normal character progression, that we'd look cooler, more unique, and be rewarded for patiently plotting along instead of taking the quicker or easier path. Here we get the opposite, the visual becomes more locked the more reliant we become are on our equipment or buffs. If an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength forced me to wear clown facepaint at the same time, I would probably use them less, if that was somehow the goal. Anyhow, I agree, Haste is not really the problem. I'm not sure STR elixirs are even in the same ballpark to make a proper comparison though. To satisfy a hard-Core challenge, I think maybe just the magical curse concept where things like Elixirs and Healing Potions are made much more expensive and all the sliders in the difficulty settings are cranked to the max.

Maybe Elixirs or spells even summons etc that typically would go all day instead reset on short rest? Might work without going too ham there. Would still allow for some strategic haul so that's not totally upended, but slightly less potent than +12 to an Attribute that we can acquire from lvl 3 on, that goes all night till sunrise lol. Another option might be get waylaid at night after the elixirs have all worn off, so there's a tradeoff. Planned buff during normal adventuring, becomes unplanned debuff when you least expect it, at camp. But they don't have anything like that in place right now except for a few setpiece things related to companions. Could probably be a mod of some sort I suppose, for the classic callback "You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself" but at 8 STR again, just cause I'm hung over from yesterday? heheh

Another option would be to have the Elixirs of Giant strength work slightly differently for STR based characters compared to other archetypes. This could be done via doubling the base attribute bonus instead of a set stat, similar to the OPs suggestions of +3 or +6. Going from 8 STR to 16/17 STR is still pretty huge, the problem is that you can go higher than what a pure class fighter can achieve via ASI at the same level in their prime, which is 19 (or maybe 20 with the hag's hair in Act I). I think they put it very high so that the STR based warrior types would also have a reason to drink them, even if the bonus there is only like +1 or +2 STR, but to me it seems like a Wizard just shouldn't be hitting as heavy as a Warrior drinking the same juice. I'm sure this was a change that came down from on high at one point, like where they tried to nix the +X bonuses in favor "set Stat to' for all those types of items/consumables in D&D. Probably a situation where it had to be some certain way cause of the wording in the PHB or whatever, but in this case the STR based BG3 characters like typical martials feel like they're losing out and getting eclipsed. There's no Elixir that can set our DEX to 21 or 27, or Wisdom to 21 or 27, but if there was, it'd probably jack up other classes archetypes in a similar sort of way. Also, since it comes in a bottle, just like with a healing potion, you can throw it at your feet to multiply the effect that way. Kinda depressing for the warrior probably, like where the splash down there just has everyone else clowning on them, long as they're bunched up within that 1.5 meter radius. Seems like a bit of a dig.