Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why does acid lower your AC?

It lowers your AC, but only while you're standing in it?

And it lowers your AC regardless of whether you're wearing metal armor, leather armor, or have draconic scales or mage armor or unarmored defense?

I assume the logic is that it eats away at whatever is protecting you making it more likely for an attack to hit an opening (Or to pierce through softened material)

Beyond that, it's more "Game logic" than "Actually makes sense logic" in that it is applied equally across all sources of AC (Since BG3 doesn't bother to track item materials, which is why Druids can still cast their spells while wearing full Plate armour when normally their spell usage is restricted when wearing non-wooden/leather equipment)

The current iteration seems to be more catered towards being less punishing than traditional "Acid" in DnD (Which is not always the chemical compound known as acid) that is notable for creatures such as Green Slimes and Black Puddings, wherein it would actually degrade armour and weapons and ultimately destroy them.

Thus it ends up being more player-friendly while still maintaining that theme of equipment degradation (Albeit in a entirely useless way thanks to Larian and their surface mechanics where acid pools last for all of a single attack upon which a creature bleeds and replaces the acid surface with blood...)

Oh, for once a complaint about something that isn't completely inconsequential.

I agree, the way "acid" is implemented is fairly stupid. But then again it ties back to Larian and their absurde obsession with having "surfaces" every four goddamn steps.
Which ties wonderfully with their clumsy control scheme, incidentally.

I tried to play as a Xenomorph draconic sorcerer and found Acid to be pretty pitiful as a damage/resistance type.

It's marginally better than poison I guess, but suffers from a similar issue in that there just aren't enough enemies who are vulnerable to Acid damage, and too few who use it as a damage type themselves to make the resistance feel worth it. Compared to Cold and Lightning, and to a lesser extent Fire, which have a ton of utility throughout.

It's also weird cause every acid spell causes a splash puddle, which is not generally what I want in close quarters, esp. if it's going to splash over and screw my characters' AC too. Again, poison puddles are kinda similar.

And then the only real Acid spell for a workhorse, is Chromatic Orb, since it can be upcast, twinned, distant spell etc. but that's a bit underwhelming compared to say an Ice Storm, or a Lightning bolt. i think they might have given the Acid splash some form of grease, so it could at least be competing with the Chromatic Orb Ice in knocking enemies prone.

I think the off brand Draconic Sorcerers need a spell more like Glyph of Warding, or just some form of Fireball that can work like an AoE spell for the associated element, just so it isn't all Chromatic Orb all the time. Like at least the Green Dragons get Cloud Kill, even if all the cloud spells are usually eclipsed by better direct damage stuff, but you know Acid is just never going to compete there.

Smacking with the Chromatic orb is highly satisfying, but it's pretty one note. I don't know maybe Acid might cause blindness?

Or maybe it produces an effect similar to heat metal, but working the opposite way? You know like where it's more effective vs Leather and Cloth than Metal, so it could mirror that spell just at the other end. Depending on the enemies.

Maybe the Goblins and Barbarians should kinda freak out and do a mini Otto's dance, you know cause it's acid.

Same deal for the Dragonborn breath attacks I think, where some are just clearly a lot better than others. Like Fire and Ice and Electricity can all have knock on interactions, but Acid doesn't seem to do anything.

Like is it really Acid, or is this more like white wine vinegar? Cause sometimes it feels like the latter heheh

I mean I don't know, maybe there needs to be some sort of Baking Soda & Vinegar Volcano thing going on here, like to mirror the way Ice acts with wet surfaces, or fire can set off explosions. If it's corrosive enough to have it's own plague imps, it might handle locks and doors or do something like that.

Maybe it intereacts with "Brine" in some sort of crazy way?

I feel like the terms Brine and Acid are used sorta interchangeably, when the former suggest Salt and something base and the later it's exact opposite. So who knows, I mean those barrels do exist, so maybe Acid could like counteract that, or have additional utility in those ways. They could do the same for poison probably with an extra interaction. I thought it was kinda funny they got those stinky gloves that add noxious fumes to the acid, but that seems a bit more like a poison thing to me. Like maced to the face. But I don't know, perhaps doing more with the fumes lol

It's hard to dodge while under the effects of LSD due to the proliferation of visual stimuli which makes it hard to accurately track movement. Also distracting thoughts.

My only issue is that it should last for 15-18 hours not just while you stand in it.

Also why are all these people running around with all this LSD and where are they getting the Ergot?

Acid is another videogamey implementation that makes zero sense from a role-playing point of view.

Personally I would hope for a bit more real world logic applied into the gameplay of an RPG. Larian borrows too much from platform games. Serious RPGs are usually a bit more realistic than BG3 for world building and immersion reasons.

I like surfaces. I think the game should strength and extend the surface effects.

I think it should damage the armor permanently until repaired depending on how long the on surface exposure lasts.

I think it should damage the armor permanently until repaired depending on how long the on surface exposure lasts.

The idea, which is consistent with earlier BG/similar games, is that acid causes erosion on your amor.

IIRC the effect used to be limited to actual armor. However, in BG3, Mage Armor and its variations (Draconic is just a variation of Mage Armor) are equivalent to a magically conjured alternative to the actual metal/non-metal armor. They are all technically the same. As a result of this, I guess, acid has to have the same effect on both physical and magical armor. In other words, it affects AC, regardless where you get your AC from.

The only weird thing about this in BG3 is that the acid covering does not travel with whoever gets caught with the acid. In other words, the weird thing is that acid has a clearly defined range! Well, it's acid - something like water - its effect should be like the wet effect of water - they all should stay for a while with whoever get them.

Anyway, acid-based attack in this game is pretty much meaningless in this game (perhaps except on one occasion when acid is used as a deterrent).

In comparison, in BG2, acid attack is rare (not as rare as in BG3), but whenever it is used again the player party, it can - on more than a few occasions - kill player characters in no time.

I think the answer is because Larian wanted to have a surface effect for acid, but didn’t want to spend a lot of time and resources developing a realistic effect.

Yes. It was either the AC effect, or automatically having your tea kettles descaled.

More interestingly, it *doesn't do damage*. It seems the people of Faerun do not condone acid attacks. Even the black market only offers substances harmful to metal

the best damage is lightning because its really hard to kill a certain enermy without it but thats in act 3 which most players will never get to

I do to. In D:OŚ games. Definitely a system worth iteration and improving upon. But in BG3 they just don’t fit too well.

Acid gives -2 AC cause Larian added surfaces and had to come up with a different effect for each.

Mechanics making sense in the setting just seems to be fairly low in Larian’s priority list.

I'm quite torn on surfaces.

On the one hand, they can be interesting, adding in more tactical options and various combinations (Especially in DOS where surfaces also had the option for clouds that sat above them providing a second layer of "Surface")

On the other hand, there's plenty of jank with them. Such as attacking targets creating the blood surface that overrides any other material directly below them (At least in DOS this could still allow Electrified to persist as blood interacted with electrified water to become electrified itself) and of course the effects of surfaces being pretty wild in some situations (I recall in DOS2 getting defeated a bunch because electrified surfaces causing stun meant that if you ran out of Magic Armour you were perma-stunned)

Surfaces definitely need game systems to be designed around them, rather than shoehorning surfaces into a system that doesn't account for them like in BG3.

Though, I can still see them being tricky to get right, especially when trying to tune the power so that they're not so weak as to be useless and not so strong that you play with surfaces more than actual skills (Similar to how in ME3 the damage of combos was so high that actual skills and skill damage was irrelevant, it was all about proccing the combo damage)

What I think was very smart about them is D:OSs is that Larian took what is a fairly abstract aspect of RPG - status effects - and externalised them into the game map, and made them easy to interact with.

Oh, I have complaints aplenty about D:OSs combat, but in general it is a very fresh take and one worth pursuing and expanding on.

In BG3 though, I just found them intrusive rather than fun. Not that they couldn't get more AoE effects that get place on the map - I just didn't think Larian's guaranteed effect design gelled with will roll based nature of D&D.