Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 8 Feedback: Too much flexibility hurts some new additions

This might be a bit of an essay, so bear with me.

I want to start off by saying that so far, I'm really enjoying patch 8. The subclasses are great and I think the game is more than well set up to have a long lifetime and have players returning to it for years to come. My feedback here is smaller scale, but points out a trend with some of the new additions that I personally would like to see tweaked.

Essentially, I'm finding that in trying to increase the flexibility and applicability of certain spells, features and subclasses, additions have been made which actually detract from what makes those things unique and compelling.

I think the best example of this is Booming Blade. I know this one has already been addressed to a certain degree, but I think the way it's been handled misses the point. Right now, the cantrip has been changed so that it can only be used once per turn, but it still triggers extra attack, meaning that any martial character without access to it is immediately at a disadvantage since it's just flat extra damage. Historically in tabletop, melee cantrips have served as ways for martials without access to extra attack to keep pace with those that have it (Rogues especially). They are also what make features like the Eldritch Knight's War Magic a little more compelling and unique, since you are rewarded for taking that subclass by being able to take advantage of the unique interaction there. Interactions with Sorcerer's Quickened Spell also apply here.

By making Booming Blade useable with extra attack, it goes from an interesting alternative melee option with specific use cases and neat interactions to something that every single martial character should be trying to access in some way. I would argue that it makes the spell less interesting and less fun to have it be this ubiquitous, and I would suggest that Larian look at removing this interaction. Maybe this is something that could apply only to honor mode, as that mode tends to want to stick closer to tabletop rules.

The Hexblade subclass also suffers from this. In Patch 8, the subclass includes access to extra attack, something it doesn't have in tabletop. There, gaining access to extra attack requires also taking the Pact of the Blade, which in BG3 comes with extra attack automatically at level 6. By including extra attack in the subclass, which also gives the ability to make melee attacks with your CHA modifier like PotB, we've ended up in a spot where Hexblade and PotB are almost completely redundant with one another despite intuitively feeling like they should pair perfectly. I can appreciate the desire to give Hexblade users the flexibility to NOT take PotB, but if I'm being honest, I think most people wanting to play Hexblade would be actively excited to pick PotB anyway. I would love to see extra attack removed from Hexblade (again, even if only in honor mode) so that both the subclass and PotB have use cases and can be used together.

The third example deals with my personal favorite new subclass, the Circle of Stars Druid. Specifically, I'm talking about the bonus action attack that has been added to the Dragon constellation form. In tabletop, Dragon form has historically been used as a way to essentially guarantee that you will not lose concentration on a powerful spell, which for late game druids can define an entire encounter. The issue in BG3 comes from the 20 foot fly speed and hovering you gain at level 10, which are far less impactful in BG3 than in tabletop due to the inability to actually hover in the air while flying (and illithid powers granting any character way more fly speed for almost free.)

In order to spice up the form a bit, Larian decided to add a bonus action "breath weapon" attack to the dragon form, which has less range than the archer form but does more damage and hits multiple targets. I would argue that the addition of this attack takes a lot of the shine off of the archer form, which is presented as "the damage form" of the three constellation options. Extra range is great, but the difference between a 1d8 attack roll on a single target and 2d6 (why is this thing doing greatsword damage) to MULTIPLE targets is well worth getting your druid a bit closer to the action. The Dazzling Breath even still does half damage on a successful DEX save, and archer form doesn't even out damage it on a single target until it upgrades to 2d8 at level 10. I really like the idea that Larian is going for here, but I would love to see Dazzling Breath lean less into raw damage and more into the utility/strategy that dragon form is supposed to embody. Reducing the damage to 1d6, but adding a chance to blind or daze targets would be really interesting in my opinion, and would preserve archer forms status as "the damage one" while still adding some flair and usefulness to dragon form.

Overall patch 8 is looking awesome, and I'm excited to play more with it. I just think that Larian may have gone a little overboard when trying to juice up some of the new additions, and the game would actually benefit from scaling them back just a bit. If you actually read this entire thing, I appreciate it!