I'm sorry to say, but there is still too much ability to choose this game which makes it too easy. What I mean is that stealth is still broken which still breaks the entire game. My Bard and Shadow heart we're easily able to wipe out three intellect devourers and we're practically right on top of them. All I had to do was have both characters in stealth mode, avoid the cones, shoot and stealth over and over again until they were dead. Each round shoot and stealth and they just stood there the whole time not even moving to look for us.

At least if you're going to keep the stealth the way it is currently, make it so that the enemies move to try to find you if you start to attack them and shoot them. That way even if you are able to jump back into stealth during your turn as a bonus action, the enemy might still find you and battle with you.

My admittedly completely subjective experience with no science to back it up was that enemies were even worse in patch 9 at triggering combat if they were attacked from outside the normal combat zone, even if my party weren’t in stealth.

I agree enemies should seek out the source of attacks though and/or combat mode should be triggered when you attack an enemy even if they don’t spot you.

In another thread, The_Red_Queen pointed out that in this patch enemies seem really unobservant of arrows and bolts hitting them from unseen sources, which I've experienced as well. [edit: and in this thread while I was writing this, lol]

I think another factor here is how much we've been playing this game - how many times have you fought those intellect devourers with SH? Probably at least twice with every available class? I think it's really easy to cheese things when we're super familiar with how every system works. That encounter is now trivial, but of course the first couple of times I played it, almost two years ago, I got wiped out in a hurry.

The intellect devourers are currently bugged : https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=830988#Post830988
Like, one of them didn't even take any actions during one of my playthrough.

I'm fine with encounters not being too difficult at that point. It's early Act 1 and it still need to be "manageable" for new players. After all, without that bug, one hit from one of them can be lethal 😅 It still need to fix it though, but I wouldn't call it easy. Especially if the player is surprised by them.

That being said, I hope encounters get progressively harder (even harder than currently). I'm not sure how : scaling with our level? better AI?
I don't see stealth as being a huge problem, personally. It could be improved and polished here and there. But not that outrageous. I don't actively try to cheese the game, to be fair. So, that's the only input I'll give on that 🙂.

That, yes!

+1!
That could be fix with added difficulty options/level when creating a new game, in my opinion 🙂

Yes, I have banged on about this Sorry for the repetition.

How about Spirit Guardians not breaking Invisibility?

Or potion of haste letting you cast double Fireball?

Are you saying that it does? Or that you want it to do that?
Because it shouldn't. Invisibility breaks if the user attacks or casts a spell or if the concentration ends.

That's not normal indeed. Haste (spell or potion) should only allow an extra action to attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action.

Personally, that I can think of right now, I could do with concentration not breaking when it shouldn't and smaller quantity of scrolls, potions and food.

It's not about early versus later fights. It's about Stealth as a Bonus for everyone. That is the whole point of Cunning Action for Rogues is to make it so they can stealth and attack and stealth again but no one else can. It makes it so Rogues are the only ones who can do this.

By allowing everyone to do this even at level 1, it cheeses the entire combat system. When I replay BG3, I try different combat tactics each time to test it. This playthrough, I tried the stealth, and it's still way broken. If a player discovers this early on, the game can become extremely boring and easy especially when the monsters don't hunt for you. That is just bad design, and it really needs fixing.

Time for a fighter playthrough challenge. Can I stealth my way through and therefore never lose a single HP?

Oh, I see what you mean.

I don't feel compelled to use "hide", personally. I only use it outside of combat (except for Rogue).

But it would indeed be nice to have "hide" as an action for everyone and as a bonus action when appropriate (Cunning action for Rogue, Goblin's Nimble escape, Ranger's Vanish at 14th).

RAW, "shove" should be an action as well, and "jump" only costs movement (not an action or bonus action).

Not that all homebrew rules are bad, but I don't see those ones as a logical improvement (especially not in terms of balance).
But I feel like this probably has been said multiple times on this forum already 😅

Yes. All these things would make the game better, but the stealth is definitely the most broken. It's gotta be fixed because dang. That's too easy. Everybody stealth, shoot, stealth. All enemies die.

Though I will say, I have done a Shove and Throw Enemies only playthrough up to the harpy fight, and my Barbarian solo'd all enemies using only throw and shove in every fight. No other companions. So that's dang broken too.

Yes, agreed on all points. Including that it’s probably been said multiple times, but I think it bears repeating! If enough of us make a fuss hopefully Larian will listen, as they did on reactions.

Gotcha, yeah, stealth in combat should be limited to rogue for sure.

In another thread, someone suggested that a take cover action or bonus action would be reasonable for other classes, which if reasonable, but won't happen

This is a really important topic, actually. I just watched a solo gameplay vid and you forget there's so much cheese everywhere. It makes me wonder what's the actual point in playing D&D or having a party in the first place. This doesn't even involve broken stealth this time.

They killed Minthara by plopping down an explosive barrel next to her. She doesn't mind and just waits for you to blow her up from a safe distance. The explosion also does not aggro the entire fort, not even the goblins in the next room. This just feels wrong on every step of the way including how easy all of it is.

Then they emptied the Zhent merchant's inventory by stealing. Only stealing is more like taking whatever you want from a container in this game. It's extremely easy and no one cares. Just take what you want, there are no consequences or any difficulty involved. Because of save scumming there should be some kind of reputation system that would create consequences even if you don't get caught. Even legendary thieves who don't get caught are known to be thieves.

Next, priestess Gut goes down in a "surprise" attack before she gets a turn. She's not at all suspicious at them dipping their weapons in a torch next to her. The surprise attack + another full surprise round + free fire damage + Divine Smite on every attack just takes her down effortlessly without having to spend any OP consumables. The amount of surprise attacks this game gives you is surreal and also Paladin's burst damage potential combined with unlimited resting is very OP.

Then, more explosive barrels are looted from the storage room. Nevermind having to carry heavy barrels through a hostile fort, you can just conveniently teleport them to camp with the press of a button. And instantly send them wherever you want with magic pockets to blow up more unsuspecting bosses.

Where's the game, actually? This is a children's sandbox.

Yes. There are a lot of ways to exploit the game. No doubt. What concerns me so much about the stealth mechanic, though, above all others is that it can be easily discovered by brand new players who know virtually nothing about D&D or the game or anything.

It's kinda an RPG staple to sneak. So even players who are brand new will do it as soon as they find out how. Then, when they learn you can shoot and stealth in the same turn, and enemies won't even hunt for you... It's over.

So yes, I agree that barrels teleported through pockets is cheese and Minthara exploding with no response is not good, but those exploits are less easy to discover, so they aren't as big a deal to the game as this stealth problem.

This is literally a game breaking issue. New baby player stealths. Shoots. Stealths. Realizes this can work on just about every fight. All challenge is completely removed from the game until there is a fight that doesn't let them do this. By that time, the player has NO idea how to strategically fight anything because they've been stealthing it the whole time. Thus, they get stuck, frustrated, and quit the game thinking it's dumb. Either that or they quit long beforehand because of just how dull combat is

I agree that the game’s handling of stealth is particularly egregious, but for me it’s the elements that affect you even when you are not trying to exploit the mechanics that I find really annoying. I’m generally okay with just not doing things that I think are silly, such as trying to hide my armoured paladin right next to an enemy, but it’s entirely reasonable to want to try to do some things stealthily - as you say it’s an RPG staple - so the fact that the game doesn’t handle it well means that trying to avoid cheese means cutting ourselves off from potentially clever and fun ways to do things.

For example, I hardly ever try to sneak up on enemies and enter battle with any of my characters stealthed any more, because too often the enemies don’t spot my characters and I can just keep attacking without combat triggering, getting an unreasonable advantage that I don’t want. Well, when the enemies don’t spot one of my characters, that character gets unlucky with initiative, and then takes an unwarranted hammering before I can bring the rest of my party in! But my point is that sneaking up and surprising the enemy is something I’d like to be able to do, but feel I can’t because of the way the game currently works.

Of course this is not THAT dramatic of an issue. But it would be nice to have stealth rebalanced.

Fun.
Don't judge it until you try it. :P

I went in here believing this will be a complaint to the amout of Waterdeep cheese we find around Baldur's Gate

I believe people shouldn't be punished for their creativity. I know it sounds strange when you put it this way, absurd maybe but... people have fun this way, if the DM allows it than it's not breaking rules. If you don't want this, don't use such mechanics, create your own traps, a bit further away and lure enemies there.

I, for one, love to hear how people get around difficult encounters, but I am a easy-level kind of player and I find BG3 EA to be impossibly difficult at times - so my voice might not carry as much weight around here

I don't want to be extreme here in either direction, so I apologize if it seems I am. The point here is that stealth is a major issue presently because it is a major RPG staple. If it is too easy to cheese, it breaks the game.

Let me give an example. I'm a new player. I've been presented with a dire situation - a tadpole in my head. I'm a serious gamer, so I'm going to play the game taking the most logical and careful approach I can because I'm roleplaying. I'm putting myself into the role of my character and becoming said character.

So, what do I do? I'm scared of mind flayers and devil's and devourers popping out at me, so I sneak. I come up on the devourers. Crap! Best be careful. Wait. I can see their sight cones. Okay. Just avoid them. Get into a good position so it's hard for them to get to me. Strategic gameplay.

I shoot. Wait. Oh. I can stealth as a bonus action. Okay. I do so with both characters. The enemies don't do anything. What? Should I now NOT do something intelligent and smart just so I can have enemies come after me? If I do, I break character, for why would my character who has found a valid method of wiping out enemies without being in danger do something that would endanger themselves just so me, the player can enjoy combat? Immersion broken. Either that or I continue to do what my character would do and have tedious and boring battles where my enemies don't fight back simply because Larian allows my characters to shoot, stealth, and enemies do nothing.

If the DM allows players to cheese, then that means the characters WOULD cheese because their lives are in danger and the characters are going to intelligently exploit the cheese to avoid the potential of getting hurt. That is why the cheese needs to be tamed, especially for something like stealth which is SO common. It makes players completely disengage from their characters to NOT cheese the game, thus ruining the roleplay.

Not sure what issue exactly you’re referring to here as a few have been brought up. I do find the handling of sneak when entering combat severely reduces my enjoyment playing sneakier characters, and though I guess I’d not describe it as game breaking for me this is a high priority fix rather than a “nice to have”. I like sneaky characters and desperately want to be able to play them without having to hamstring myself to avoid cheese.

Other changes, such as making hide an action (except a cunning action for rogues) are for me still important but lower priority. Particularly as I quite like my sneaky rangers and am quite happy that they can hide and shoot in one turn! Per RAW I don’t think they’d be able to at the levels we’re likely to get in BG3.

The one addressed by a thread's title - the existence of cheesy gameplay in the game. Let me elaborate a bit on my first remark. I don't think that the mere existence of cheesy strats ruins the game or makes the whole game "a children's sandbox" or results in "it's over" moment. I think it all ties up into a player wanting reasonable challenge, but at the same time wanting the rules to be forced upon them by a system. Thats why I am more on the side of "if you don't like it - don't do it" argument than "it ruins the experience" argument. Because what really ruins the experience are the mental blockers in players' heads. BTW, a lot of people say that Larian loves cheesy strats, but when I watch PfH I always see the classic "game journalist gameplay" with two people using zero cheesing at all and getting a tough beating. I think the devs behind the game design are not "pro gamers" themselves, thats why they can't satisfy the demand for "fair system" that comes from those who are torn apart between being able to cheese and not wanting to. Those are the few that write those requests on forums etc, while I think the majority just enjoy the system as it is or set self limitations according to their preference. Thats why I pointed out that the issue is not that dramatic, in my opinion.

No need to apologize, you have the absolute right to express your thoughts and feelings about the game as you see fit! It is feedback after all

Okay, thanks. Wasn’t sure if you were talking generally about cheese or about specific examples.

Sounds like I’m part way between you and GM4Him.

For me, there are different levels of cheese. Or rather it’s a continuum through the following three points …

(1) Mechanics that can be exploited by a player either not acting in a realistic way or just wanting to explore weird and fun consequences of game rules, but which have a genuine utility for “honest” players who can avoid the cheesing potential without restricting “sensible” play. For example, if you’re going to have exploding, moveable barrels in the game, there’s almost certainly going to be ways you can use them to cheese, particularly if you’re going to include QoL features like magic pockets and send to camp that help avoid boring inventory shuffling and trekking around. Totally removing this sort of cheese could actually make the game worse for most people, as it would restrict their “honest” use of game features, and I don’t expect Larian to do so.

(2) Mechanics that can pretty easily be ignored by players that don’t want to cheese, but that don’t have a compelling “honest” use. I’d put hiding as a bonus action in battle here. Removing this sort of cheese would help overall game balance without negatively impacting “honest” players, and I really hope Larian will do it, but it’s not essential for me.

(3) Cheesy mechanics that impact on the play of even “honest” players who quite reasonably want to do something that in itself isn’t cheesy, but is cheesy given the way it’s currently implemented. Trying to sneak up and surprise enemies before combat starts, or shove enemies off ledges are the examples that spring to mind there, along with other aspects of the hide mechanic that don’t give NPCs a fair chance to spot my party. For me, these are high priority for fixing.

(Maybe I should have been referring to Lawful and Chaotic players, rather than “honest” and other ones. Which is different from the Lawful or Chaotic characters they might be playing . Personally, I’m generally Lawful as a player even if my PC is Chaotic, and want my story to be realistic, but do enjoy exploring the more Chaotic possibilities of the game engine in some playthroughs.)

100%. I think the majority here are very serious (and that's totally okay!), but larian is like the goofy DM for people who are playing D&D for making a fun story where anything goes and silliness is rewarded. Again, that's *clearly* a minority position, but I'm definitely on team silly-creativity-and-absurd-problem-solving-is-fair-game

I want to be creative and use all tools a game gives me.

But when it's this easy, you're just left with a stupid empty feeling afterwards. It's not rewarding.

A game by definition should be a challenge. BG3 is more like children's sandbox play where a kid goes "I use the barrel and blow Minthara up" and the DM just goes "Ok she's dead" and doesn't consider the how or the consequences. Its really bad DMing on Larians part.

That's not the issue I'm talking about here. Putting aside all goofiness, etc., this thread is about how the cheese destroys the gameplay for the player who is attempting to play an RPG (ROLEplaying game). I want to be able to become my character, and so I try to do whatever I can to survive. As I'm attempting to survive, I learn that simply by hiding, shooting, and hiding again, my enemies will not even try to look for me. Survival instincts (Character me) say, "Keep doing this because this means you won't be in as much danger. You can snipe your enemies until they die. Why would you do anything different?"

The player in me then says, "Because just sniping an enemy who never comes looking for me is boring. If I want to actually have fun with combat in this game, I need to MAKE myself no longer hide, shoot, hide so I actually have some sort of combat."

"Ah, but stealth is the only thing that makes sense for ANY character to try to do as much of as possible when mind flayers and intellect devourers and goblins and duergar and drow and gnolls are out there. Why would you do anything different?" says the character in me. "It makes no sense. If I can stealth, shoot and stealth and win every time - or just about every time - why would I do anything differently? That's stupid."

"Because," says player me. "Where's the challenge in that? Where's the excitement and thrill that comes from wondering if you might not actually succeed in combat? That's boring gameplay."

"I don't care about gameplay," says character me. "I care about surviving this whole thing. You're not the one who has to suffer through the consequences of taking damage, getting poisoned, etc. I do. Are you actually telling me I need to stop doing something that means automatic wins for me just so you can have some fun? Screw you, Oh-Ominipresent-Authority-Figure!"

"Sigh. But the D&D 5e rules say you can't Stealth as a Bonus action. It's an Action. That makes a lot more sense from a balanced gameplay perspective," player me says.

"I don't care," character me says. "If I CAN shoot a spider on a web and make her take tons of damage from a fall, and she keeps jumping up on the webs so I can do it again, I'm going to shoot the webs under stupid spider matriarch lady as many times as I need to until she dies and I win. If it's easy, sucks to be you and her. AND if I can stealth, shoot, stealth the entire time while I shoot the webs out from under her so she never comes and finds me, and it is even EASIER sucks to be you and her."

"No. I'm going to make you not do those cheese tactics so that I can enjoy maybe some challenging combat where enemies aren't morons who do nothing while I shoot them endlessly from hiding," player me says.

Then player me has to force character me to shut the frick up so I can enjoy some challenging, exciting combat. I have to limit character me and tell him to constantly shut up. "You can't drink potions as Bonus Actions even if the game allows it. If you drink a potion, I won't let you use an action afterwards."

"But I have to give up my bonus now as well, meaning I can't even drink a potion and use a bonus action," says character me. "And that hinders me WAY more than my enemies. You're essentially doing the opposite, now, by limiting me in such ways, Player. You're making it so that the enemy has even MORE advantages against me. So, instead of me having super easy cheese battles where I can snipe enemies from hiding and they never come look for me, now I have enemies super easy cheese battling me and sniping me from hiding or using potions as bonus actions while I can't, etc. You're LITERALLY killing me."

"Sigh. I don't know what the solution is, Character me," says player. "I want to enjoy the game. I want to become you and have the game only allow me to do what makes sense from a player and character perspective. Instead, because the devs want a goofy and silly game, I'm forced to now choose. Do I play as a character and utilize every possible advantage I can, making the game boring, or do I play as the player and force the characters to be at a disadvantage just so I can kinda sorta enjoy some challenging battles - all the while in the back of my mind knowing that I could, at any moment, start exploiting cheese to make my life easier and just win the fight?"

Again, this is not as serious for some cheeses. People realizing that they can teleport barrels across a battlefield using magic pockets and then dropping them on enemies and blowing them up is creative cheesing. Most players aren't going to think about doing such things. I'm not as upset by that kind of stuff. In most games, there is that kind of cheese where players who have been playing the game for some time will think of such things and have fun with it.

I'm talking about STEALTH here. Stealth is an absolute basic component of RPGs across the board. Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age, BG1 and 2, IWD1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2... the list goes on and on. You stealth so that you can sneak by or sneak up on your enemies, and then you get a surprise attack. Hopefully, you can weaken them a bit before they get an attack so that you have an advantage in battle. I have NEVER played an RPG that allowed me to just stealth, shoot, stealth my way to total victory with enemies never even trying to find me. Shoot! In the old Dark Forces video game, I shoot an enemy from hiding and they at least run around - even if it was like chickens with their heads cut off. They'd get shot and start searching for who was shooting at them, even if they couldn't find you because your hiding place was too good.

Not BG3. I was LITERALLY 10 feet from the devourer and just kept shooting it over and over again until it died because its sight cone was facing a certain direction and it never moved to find me. I just popped out from behind a pillar, shot it, dropped back into stealth and went behind the pillar again for ALL 3 devourers. I'm sorry, but no matter what way you look at that, that's WAY too broken.

I hate the current shove mechanics too, but quite honestly, I might play 50% of EA and never once try to shove someone because I'm using other tactics and just forget about it. Other newby players might do the same. But most players will certainly use stealth because it is a staple for the genre. Thus, it is far worse of a cheese than shove, web-shooting, barrels dropping, etc. Lots of Larian cheeses are experimental cheeses. You learn them as you experiment. Stealth is not such a cheese. And that is my point. Not having a proper stealth system completely ruins gameplay.

Only the problem solving here is not at all creative. And the game is not presented as Monty Python comedy style, so why are parts of gameplay like that?

Stealth cheesing - a normal gameplay tactic, just overpowered to the point of being completely broken
Stealing - obvious thing to do and just way too easy
Barrels and other explosives - a very obvious solution that's being shoved in the player's face since tutorial. The only surprise comes from the fact that the game lets you cheat in moving such heavy objects around and that even smart NPC's don't see an obvious bomb attack coming. So it just ends up being unrealistic and stupid in a game that's otherwise being presented as realistic and mature. It could actually be fun if you had to lure enemies into an ambush spot using Deception or Bard songs or something. Just teleporting barrels next to them and lighting them up is really dumb.

An example of an actually creative solution is using invisibility and snatching the Deep Gnomes runepowder while she's distracted so she can't blow it up. In combat the cheese tactics are not creative.

You know what is even more unrealistic?? Turn-based mode... there are no turns in real life!!

I just say that im glad i have easy button at my disposal. :P

And I'm sad that pushing ennemies, dipping weapon, jumping, sneaking, throwing (and other basic mechanics of BG3 and/or of other RPG/tactical turn based games) are so broken in this game.

I can't enjoy playing with 5 basic actions out of 10 because they are poorly designed / balanced.

In fairness, I don't think jumping is so much of an issue now. At least, I don't think it's really broken in combat terms. And dipping is just a really bizarre command that probably shouldn't exist anyway because it's just so bizarre and entirely ungrounded in...anything. I've never actually used it in any playthrough.

As a fan of the Thief Series, I like stealth play. It would be great if they improved how the AI deals with stealth etc.

That being said most of the complaints are choices. You have to choose to see stealth cones. You have to choose to re-stealth after an action.

I choose not to abuse stealth, use barrelmancy, dip, shove, etc. because *I* don't find those mechanics fun. However there are others who find those mechanics fun. Why would I want to impose my definition of fun on everyone by removing the things I don't like?

I agree with the OP. Larian should do some major work to remove easy exploits.

The worst exploits are the ones where you can:
- Attack an enemy without consequence (bonus action hide, darkness, fog, attacking from long range, etc.)
- Rig environmental hazards (barrels, create water, etc.) or have the environment pre-rigged by Larian (i.e., webs in Spider Matriarch fight, numerous NPCs placed close the edge of a cliff or under a falling object).
- Extra surprise attack rounds. Getting the first attack is enough of an advantage.

It is impossible for the devs to balance difficulty an encounter where there is an easy exploit that some players might not use. Even just getting a surprise attack round is generally enough to make any encounter trivially easy that is balanced for situations where the party does not get a surprise attack round.

Yeah I don’t think jump is mechanically a issue either. I would wish for shorten distance, but it would require too many redesigns map wise. I would be fine with less silly, quieter sound effect.

Dipping is mostly dumb (and so is healing potion splashing) but not that big of a deal. Potions more so, but it’s mostly how counterintuitive it is that annoys me.

Push/throw - yeah not well balanced.

Barrelmancy - eh, I think it requires enough of conscious player effort for it to not be an issue for me

Stealth though - it is less of a cheese tactics, and more of a half-baked system. It feels broken, in a buggy kind of way, even though I dont think it is. It’s like Larian had an idea what to do with it, implemented some systems, and then completely forgot about it.

Edit. And of course, there comes up tired argument that those issues are an issue only if player chooses to utilise it. That applies to dip and barrelmancy only. Others are core elements of gameplay that player will either have to work overtime to not use them, but even so you can’t avoid AI using them. That said push has been better in patch9 for me so far - I don’t know if they nerfed AI to play less optimally or if I was just lucky. The usual first push fest (goblin throne room) had suspiciously few push attempts made, and those that were made felt warranted. We will see how the push-hell in gromforge will go.

This would be great along with combat stealth going back to rogue only, but less of a priority for me than fixing the stupid shove. Forced myself to give melee one more try, Lae'zel got shoved somewhere that shouldn't have happened and now she and my paladin both use crossbows (it was either that or quit in disgust.)


I have found so far in this patch that the game is doing a much better job at bringing each character into initiative as soon as they have done their initial surprise attack. Haven't made it to Grymforge yet, but haven't had a single instance that I recall where I could constantly hit without being in combat.

The issue with fixing this in the current system is that stealth players in the single player mode will get screwed if all characters are forced to join the combat when one attacks. We would need them to add a proper pause function and ready attack before they even try to make everyone enter combat at the same time. Then those of us with multiple stealthy characters in the party can simply use TB with readied attacks and those who seem to have your issue would not have it.

I am curious though since several people have complained about one character getting beaten up, in what order are you attacking and how are you positioning? For the current party I am using, I attack with ranged rogue first so he can hide again, then with my more armoured character, then the others. Ranged characters are positioned at max range without disadvantage and separated if possible, more armoured characters are positioned a bit closer to the enemies, but just behind where I will put down an AoE spell. With my standard party of all ranged, I do the same but keep everyone at max distance and use more crowd control. Never had the problem with this strategy and wondering what I am doing differently.

Jump is broken but not because it is a bonus action or because you can magically jump really far.
It is because a common jump + usual movement allow you to move further target than when you're not jumping.
When you try to optimize your movement, you have to jump a lot too often !
It just doesn't make sense and it is boring => Jump should consume the proper speed. You jump 3 meters, you can move 3 meters less => Not 1 or 2.

Dipping is not a big issue for now because I don't use it but what will happen at higher difficulty levels ? We'll probably have to use it very often to optimize and it suck because optimize dipping mean carrying a candle in your bag to dip your weapon. I like the idea of dipping a lot but the current mechanic is just cheap.

Barrelmancy is not a problem to me. As Wormerine said it require a lot of effort / creativity. I don't use them but neither did the AI so I really don't care. That's not part of the game if you don't want it to be part of the game.

Sneaking is completely broken currently and as cheap as dipping. You can't even use it in combats except if you want to cheat (to hide a character, to have a free advantage,...).

Yeah, I've come around to agreeing with you, Maximuus. I've been in several combats where I've cast something like grease and the enemy just jumps right out of it when they stand up. So frustrating.

Highlighted is exactly how combat should work in D&D, and would fix this issue entirely. If combat is initiated, EVERYONE rolls initiative and enters combat. Combatants who were unaware are Surprised and cannot act in the first round.

There's no need to have everyone Ready attacks before starting combat -> this is covered by the existence of the Surprised Condition (effectively giving the party a surprise round if the enemies fail their Perception checks).

If a single enemy finds a stealthed party member, then I'd argue that only that enemy is automatically aware of the party. Other nearby enemies would still need to succeed their Perception check or be Surprised, making it very unlikely that you'd have situation where every single enemy can attack that PC before that PC (or the rest of the party) gets a turn.

I think I basically agree with the rest of your post, but on this particular point I’ve always thought of this as being a case of one enemy spotting us and sounding an alarm to their mates. Admittedly it would be nice to have each enemy type have a bark to reflect this, but I’m not in principle against groups of enemies getting the benefit of one of them spotting one of my characters, so none of them are surprised.

As long as all my party, including the stealthed ones, actually went into turn-based mode and got a chance to roll initiative to join in, that would be good enough for me. If my other party members were too far away to help in time then that’s my fault for not planning better. And if they are all just unlucky with initiative and my originally spotted party member takes a hammering as a result then them’s the breaks! At least it’s not as likely to happen as currently, and not a whole lot worse than what can happen in any battle.

I can see this might be a bit weird and end up in some jumping around and skipping turns if some of your party were a long way from the others, and you could even end up having two separate battles concurrently, with their turns mixed together, but I still think it would be better than the current setup.

Sure, that's a perfectly valid way to run it. It's a bit weird if, for example, the enemy that discovered you rolls extremely low on initiative but his buddies all roll high. So...he then warned them before being able to act himself...? But that's a general flaw of the initiative system, and possibly solved by simply allowing that NPC to act first in initiative.

The other way--where enemies don't get a perception check unless one of their own spots the PCs--would probably be way too OP in BG3 where enemy movements/AI can be exploited and entirely avoided. Nigh-guaranteed Surprise rounds every combat would be an incredibly OP tactic.

Your 2nd paragraph is exactly what I think should happen.

Yes, jump can extend you movement by a decent amount, I don't think it is that bad - dash will still move you further and I find situations in which I don't need or wouldn't benefit from jump to be common enough, for the jump boost to become dominant strategy.

I don't see dip becoming any bigger. It's damage shouldn't scale while other damage and HP will. Sure it's extra damage so its always better to have, especially if you can dip before engagement, but I don't think it will have a major impact.

I would say jumping is a bit a problem extending your movement.

High strength characters reach insane heights by just jumping, making terrain and tactical placement less important. They can basically teleport on a hill or other elevation, when you should in fact be climbing and being affected by difficult terrain. I'm constantly shocked how high and far my 18 Strength characters can reach. Ranges have been shortened and movement rates increased = ranged characters took a double hit. And they're not safe anywhere against high strength jumpers.

High strength monsters like Minotaurs simply fly over obstacles like a 12m diameter Sleet Storm. That's exactly the type of enemy it should be useful against - slow down the scary melee brutes. Nope, they fly over. This might have more to do with a special ability than pure strength though. Whatever it is, there are way too many enemies without wings that just fly wherever they please.

Hide/Stealth...
im very sure Larian is checking how we alpha their game, its what this phase is for after all... and the hiding or sight cone isnt the issue... the lacking part is the 360 sound, or memory of the targets... alot of these problems can be fixed, with simple AI changes...

Like AI was attacked, have no target, look 360 around, head in direction of sound, head in direction of attack...

That will fix most of the issues, but also opens up combos, for example one rogue attacks, while another rogue places a minor illusion as decoy...

That is true.

The issue is inherited from D:OS1&2 so it’s a third game Larian ships with similar “stealth” system.

Additional AI behaviours can address some issues, but not walking behind an enemy, hiding, and hitting with advantage as enemy won’t able to react - it is just a more elaborate version of bonus action jump+disengage behind target and attack with advantage that we have in early builds.

I still think changes to rules would be simpler and better option, then coding AI responses to respond to cheese. AI is difficult and prone to errors. Good ruleset tend to be more reliable. It also doesn’t address the other issue I have, that at the moment stealth is player dependant, not character dependant. In an RPG it is our characters that should succeed or fail in tasks, not the players.

There are going to be subclasses added in the full game (Assassin) that are predicated on Stealth and surprise. But it feels so bad to use these mechanics that it's almost like cheating or breaking the game so much so that I don't use any stealth or hide mechanics unless I'm on a Rogue.

I just want Hide to be a FULL action for non-Rogues and for the action economy to be properly balanced. Larian surprised me with Reactions, but I'm not sure the way they handle stealth/obscurity in their games is ever going to be conducive to feeling like it's truly a part of the identity of a class vs. cheating.

I am curious to Assassin and how broken it could be in BG3 especially if they have a Haste potion or potential multiclass dip in Fighter.

yea full action dosent really fix it, it just moves the problem to higher levels when people get more actions with spells etc... hide is part of DnD 5e, what needs to solve it is how AI uses perception just not on sight but also 360sound, and how it reacts to investigation when in combat but cant persive a enemy...

for example, greater invisibility adds the same problem, and everyone can be target of greater invis... you have to add 360 sound to AI and a reactive AI that tries to look for targets...

so no, full action, or obscure etc, dosent fix the problem... it at best delays it, and it will come back with greater invis and more actions... only a reactive AI can fix this...

The way I am seeing it is that if all characters are brought into combat at the same time, then only groups of four players will be able to make surprise attacks since they are only controlling one character each and can coordinate properly using chat, just like in DnD when a group all ambushes at the same time. The attacks are all happening at once, if the enemy is unaware of the party, then they don't get to make any extra checks or roll initiative in the middle of the ambush.

Not sure that Larian would get it right in singleplayer to have all four of our characters get to make their surprise attacks before the enemies do anything. Once the first character has attacked, there would have to be an immediate popup or something asking if we wanted to do surprise attacks for each of our other characters (to simulate the full party ambush.) I feel like their version of Surprised would be the enemy constantly rolling Perception checks in real time until our characters who are now in TB mode are guaranteed to fail their stealth rolls, and because we cannot control more than one at a time, we get screwed out of a proper ambush. Having an actual pause and ready attack features seems like it would be less complicated than all of this.

The logical way to approach surprise rounds would be to just have all our characters get pulled into turn-based while the others are still in stealth. Those characters are still stealthed, still under the stealth rules, but get a free turn while the enemy is surprised to do whatever. That seems like an entirely reasonableapproach to take.

Some people love it easy, silly and cheezy , thats great. And we have this right now.

Now for others, how about having it hard and tactical by removing the cheese elements and making more D&D ,difficult and more atmospheric/less silly?

Wouldn't that be amazing. Both worlds, we pick.
Right now its a one way fromage carnival street. Making it just smellier <hard> <very hard> <impossible> won't change the type of cheese. We need options to remove/add stuff.

So much of this could be solved with a customized D&D options menu. But after 2 years not a hint of such thing could be available...So MODS I guess.
Even the first months of EA for Pathfinder WoTr, I think there were way more gameplay options/customization than the 2 years of BG3 EA combined.

We still have to see the implementation of difficulty settings. It has been hinted at but we haven't heard of it a single time.

See this thread for discussions about that subject : https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=751481&page=1

The way I am seeing it is that, if one character attacks from Surprise, then all player characters AND enemies are brought into the combat TB mode, and enemies have to make a Perception check or be Surprised = lose their first turn. This way, it doesn't require a huge amount of coordination from the players. The other 3 characters just have to be relatively close by.

Since enemies would be pulled into TB mode, they would not be constantly rolling Perception checks in real time. They'd roll Perception once, either at the beginning of the combat or the start of their turn. A success means they could act that first turn; a failure means they couldn't.

By this, do you mean that the stealthed characters wouldn't be pulled into TB mode? Being stealthed isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with being in TB mode...

This only works if BG3 doesn't double count surprise rounds. Under your suggestion, stealthed characters not brought into TB mode should not get an additional turn the same round they enter the combat.

I have quite a different experience than you then. Better use jump + speed + action than wasting your entire action (and eventually extra attack) for dash.
The arena are not really large and the difference between dash (action + speed) and jump (bonus action + speed) is not often really worth it.

I mostly NEVER use dash but I feel the need to spend my bonus action with jump very often just to benefit the extended movement.
Jumping to extend your movement is a very optimal action if you don't have something specific to do with your bonus action. Which may happen quite often at the beginning of combats depending your class/subclass.

This is still true. Jump gives you an increased distance and thus makes Dash much less effective, especially when you can jump up ridiculous distances instead of having to climb.

Plus, I'd prefer rolling through an enemy controlled space than jumping ridiculously over their heads like a grasshopper... But that's more animation than mechanics and mechanics is the topic. Still, just wanted to put that out there again.

Well I really hate how PC's and enemies play like Spiderman in BG3. It's showcased in the very first fight against the imps where 17 Strength lets you fly to high elevation rather than it being a meaninful obstacle to climb to. You can't even make a good old fashioned shield wall. I've had hellboars just jump over my frontliners. It's really dumb from both a tactical and stylistic point of view.

Quoting myself because this is related informations.

Here's the difference between jumping + moving and dash. I tried with a strenght character and with Gale.

Gale can move 18m if he dash and 11m if he jump + move.
My Paladin can move 18m if he dash and 15m if he jump + move.

Dash is useless and jumping is the optimal way to move even if there aren't any verticality.
Sure, the difference for non-strenght based characters is "important" but it does not worth wasting your action at all.

Seems like your claim is only true for Strength characters. Gale doesn't look like he gained any significant distance from using the Jump Bonus Action...? Maybe 5 extra feet of distance, for a ~15% movement speed buff?

Whereas the strength character got an extra ~15-20 feet of movement by jumping, for a ~60% movement speed buff.

And of course the big consideration is: "Is that extra distance worth a bonus action?" The answer to which is highly affected by
- verticality of terrain
- opportunity attacks that you might entirely skip by jumping over enemies
- surface hazards you could jump over
- what other bonus actions your character has

Of course it depends the situation. It is mostly usefull during the first turn for some characters... And always for characters that have to move a lot during combats.

But I'd rather ask if wasting an action worth the extra distance given by dash. Answer highly affected by :
- the size of combat arena
- the range of attack of non-strenght based characters

Many spells and all ranged weapons have a range attack of 18m. If Gale jump + move it is 11m more. It mean that even the worst character at jumping can attack 27m arround him at the cost of an action + a bonus action. Except at the beginning of combats, you mostly never need 27m so the extra distance given by dash that makes you move 7m farther is a waste of action in most situation.

I have plenty exemple in my last playthrough (I record everything) in which Gale use this technique and can attack an ennemy he could'nt have if he had just move (or obviously if he had dash).

On top of that, strenght based characters is a rather "common" build.
Just try to jump before moving and you'll probably notice pretty fast how optimal it is

Sure, his jump+move is 11m, but his regular move is already 9m. So Gale is spending a bonus action to move an additional 2m. Which, hey, might be just what you need to get in range!

But that's much less likely to be relevant than a Strength character getting an extra 6m from jumping, especially since Str characters likely are melee. That's a 65% increase on the area they threaten! And especially worth it since Str characters typically have less use for their bonus actions. And here's where jump increasing distance is dumb, as it almost entirely overshadows Dash.

It feels like the AI plays around Gale’s move+attack range radius, consistently hanging 70 feet away from him. Hence, jump isn’t just 2 feet of extra movement, it’s the exact right amount of movement to get into spell range.

The worst part of jump, to me, is that it costs movement to create movement, but the game won’t let you plan around the tipping point where PCs don’t have enough movement left to jump.

Here are two sequences:
1. At start of turn, no enemy is within Magic Missile range. Because MM has multiple targets, the auto-pather won’t tell you if there’s any way to get in range (which it would for Eldritch Blast). Moving towards the target, you realize you’re half a foot short. Because you’ve used a bunch of movement, you’ve unwittingly crossed the invisible line beyond which you can no longer jump. Target out of reach for good, turn possibly wasted. Feels horrendous

2. At start of turn, no enemy is within Magic Missile range. You know what’s up so you jump immediately. You know about the wonky pathing so you jump over a weird corner or obstacle around which the auto-pather goes kinda nuts. Jump effectively gives 3 or 4 feet of movement. Enemy in sight, shoot’em dead. Feels fine, but the decisional meat of that turn was all around jumping, just like last turn, just like next turn. Wizards jump around, that’s the way it is in BG3.

So here is exactly how jump works in the game currently.

- All characters seems to be able to jump 5m.
- The distance they can jump is 5m + their strenght modifier if positive
- The movement cost is always 3m

=> Gale with his -1 modifier can jump 5m (5 + 0). Jumping 5m cost 3m so it gives him 2 meters of extra move.
=> Shadowheart with her +1 modifier can jump 6m (5 + 1). Jumping 6m cost 3m so it gives her 3 meters of extra move.
=> My 18 strength character with his +4 modifier can jump 9m (5 + 4). Jumping 9m cost 3m so it gives him 6m of extra move.

Characters are not penalized if their modifier is negative. Everyone have a minimum of +2 meters of extra move.
Of course the higher is your strenght modifier, the higher is the extra move granted by jumping.

Fortunately (at least for me), it is quite easy to edit the jump so that it consumes the proper distance.



If you are right, I guess I'll have a very pleasant time playing the game with the proper jump distance. I'd have to strategize a lot more to be able to attack them.
Or maybe it's going to make longbow and heavy crossbow even more appealing when I'll have edited their range (range in DnD are too big for BG3 but I plan to keep the proportions between weapons as much as possible).

Can't wait to try this

Thanks for the details on how it works @Flooter and @Maximuuus.On the one hand, I like that the AI seems to be smart in this way.

On the other hand, this turns Extra Jump Movement into even more of an exploit. If the AI is coded to try to stay just outside of ranged/spellcasters, but you can bypass that too-far-distance by Jumping, then you're taking advantage of a limitation of the AI. Jumping every turn becomes mandatory, which is boring and silly.

This should be changed. You should be able to hover over an enemy with a ranged attack, and the game should use silhouettes to tell you how much movement you'd need to hit them (if you can). This should include extra movement from Jumping, as jumping--and the extra movement you get--seems like a core feature of the game atm. Alternatively, just make jumping cost 1 foot of movement per foot jumped so we can avoid this problem entirely.

Hey, if you do that, and you also make the jump button effectively free and cost no part of your turn (and so usable as often as necessary), then we're in line with actual 5e. Fancy that...

That's CRAZY talk, Niara. CRAZY! 😱

😂

I don't think I am explaining what I mean clearly enough. What I want to happen would be the tabletop equivalent of the party using hand signals or a countdown to ensure all their attacks go off at the same time. The enemies would not be making any perception check during the second or less that this would be occurring, if the party has made it up to this point successfully without being seen by the enemy then the ambush happens. Pretty sure multiplayer can do this already. Since we do not have ready attacks and a proper pause, in singleplayer we have to micromanage this one character at a time and our attacks do not go off at the same time due to the system.

How I am interpreting what you are saying, and there is a good chance I am misunderstanding, is the tabletop equivalent of having the party set up the ambush, but one person attacks before they are supposed to, which definitely would cause the enemy to make a perception check or be surprised, before any of the rest of the party gets to go. If there was a way to bring everyone into the combat once the first character has attacked, but guarantee the rest of our party got to attack first (to simulate all of us attacking at once) then I would be ok with that. I just feel like Larian would muck this up somehow and the rest of our characters would get stuck in initiative order wherever the dice puts them, forfeiting the ambush attack they would have had in multiplayer and tabletop.

Speaking of weak characters jumping, is there anywhere Gale can't actually follow you when exploring and jumping? I only remember ONE jump he can't make to use some minor shortcut in the Underdark. Does the auto-jump ignore the strength based distance?

Why would you introduce a system like that and then make it meaningless? Especially since weak characters have access to so many forms of Misty Step / Jump / fly / thrown with Giant Strength. Sometimes having to split the party can be an interesting dynamic, too. Or did they just make all the important jumps 5m to not inconvenience the player?

Of course you can just click on fast travel waypoints to ignore all obstacles. BG3 is a bit too convenient.

I’m not 100% sure on this. In some places companions tend not to follow even when the they should be able to, such as jumping back onto the path near where you find Astarion after finding the Harper stash under the rock, and back up from the Kua Toa area in the Underdark, which seem to cause me problems for various companions so it’s hard to be sure when Gale isn’t following due to strength restrictions rather than a bug in following.

But there are at least a couple more locations where this might be what is happening, such as getting to the Harpy nest and the big jump to the ledge overlooking the goblin camp that you can get to from near the gate where you find the githyanki. And there at least used to be a spot in the cave where Rugan was trapped by gnolls where Gale and other low strength party members could get stuck because they could jump down onto a platform but not back up again, but that may have been fixed. Oh, and perhaps a couple of spots in Grymforge, too.

I guess what would prove that auto-jump wasn’t properly taking into account strength based distance is a definite example where you can’t possibly manually jump Gale, but he follows if a higher strength character goes first. I don’t have such an example myself but someone might?

Though, to be honest I do think it’s right that maps are designed so that 8 strength characters can get to the vast majority of places, and areas that require longer jumping/misty stepping etc are there as a discoverable (optional) treat or to enable the odd shortcut that weedy characters can get to via another route. Speaking as a person who often plays wimps myself, it would be annoying if there were lots of places I couldn’t get to without magical intervention.

If I’m understanding the proposal right then I think it should accomplish this.

Say all your characters are in stealth, then one attacks the enemy and combat is started for all characters. Everyone throws for initiative and a combat order is determined, and some enemies might beat some of your party. BUT those enemies are surprised so they don’t actually get to do anything on their first turn, and as a result even your party members later in the action queue will get a chance to get in their first attack before any enemy can strike back.

EDIT: In fact, depending on how exactly it was implemented the character who attacked first might even get another shot in, if their initial shot is treated as happening before the first combat round. I think BG3 does this now. Or the attack they made to start the fight could be taken as part of their turn in the first round, so if if they used an action for the attack then they start the combat with (one of) their actions already used but can use any remaining actions or bonus actions. I think it should probably work the latter way, with the round then continuing from wherever the initially attacking character ends up in the initiative queue. As long as enemies remain surprised until every character in the combat has had a turn and we come back to that first attacking character, that should work I think.

Seems like we're understanding each other fine. We just disagree on how ambushes and surprise rounds should be done in BG3. Imo, a full surprise round for every singe party member is too strong, especially since the AI and stealth system are a bit broken/exploitable, making it theoretically easy (maybe even trivial) to launch an ambush for most combats. Also, I don't think real-time coordination should have that much of an effect in a TB combat game, or that a full pause should enable players to queue up actions in a TB game.

Tbf though, I don't feel that strongly about it. Your suggestion of a surprise round for all party members would be fine, though I would hope Larian implements enemy perception circles and maybe a bit more enemy patrols to make that more difficult.

I didn't realize that what you're suggesting could be done in multiplayer. So if all players ~simultaneously launch an attack, they'll all go through before combat starts and/or before any enemy gets a chance to react?

+1 that, at the very least, it should work the latter way. The combat initiator's initiative should probably be automatically set to be the highest, and they can continue using whatever actions they had left after the initiating attack. But their turn should happen in the first round of combat, not before the combat.

+1 to this


Yes, putting the initial attacker first in the combat queue would also work

What about if the surprise attack works only for any character in stealth? First hidden character attacks, then non stealthed characters get brought into initiative like normal, any others in stealth get to make their surprise attack first then added to the initiative order.

Thinking that using the reaction system might be better (maybe easier to code.) Once the first character has attacked, the optional popup would ask us if we wanted to fire off the surprise attack on whichever other characters it is set for. Once this is done, then initiative starts normally for everyone. Wouldn't affect anyone who doesn't use this tactic on more than one character.

I do wish they would make stealth more immersive, but I have resigned myself to probably playing on a higher difficulty mode just so the ambush doesn't trivialize the combat. I just can't enjoy playing a game by announcing myself to the enemy, makes me feel like an idiot with no sense of tactics. Will take the messy system we have now over having the tactical ambush ability removed, even though it is far from ideal. I don't usually play TB games and not being able to set up characters for simultaneous actions is extremely frustrating, this is why I want proper pause and queued/ready action capability, the latter of which is already in DnD rules.

As for multiplayer, I am only speculating that the proper ambush can occur because all characters can be moved at the same time during exploration as well as perform different actions. It makes sense that any coordinated attack actions can also be done like this. Hopefully someone who has actually played like this will confirm.

This would make sense. The first attacking character should definitely not get another whole extra turn on top of their surprise attack.

I’m not sure I’m understanding this suggestion. I suspect I may just not be getting your point.

But in case I am, let’s take the two alternatives in turn. We’ll assume that our whole party is in stealth, then one attacks, surprising the enemies.

At that point, their attention drawn, the enemy should have an opportunity to spot their attacker and anyone nearby, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll say any other party members forced to make a stealth check succeed, so the whole party remains in stealth except for the attacker.

So the proposal is that combat always starts at that point, and let's say that the “surprising” character always gets first spot in the initiative queue as per mrfuji3’s good suggestion.

We have suggested that all enemies and party members enter combat, roll for initiative and get slotted into the queue, then our initial character gets to complete any other actions and bonus actions (beyond their initial attack) before ending their turn. Any enemies would effectively skip their turns in this first round as they’re all surprised, so what actually happens in this first round is that the rest of our party get to take their actions and bonus actions, with the advantage of starting their turn in stealth as they were hidden when combat started. Our "surprising" character then gets to make their second attack, but by then enemies can take reactions and then combat proceeds as normal.

In summary, in the first round our whole party gets to take their actions and bonus actions with the advantage of stealth on their first attack, and the enemy gets to do nothing.

Is your suggestion that only your surprising character actually joins combat at first? If so, let’s work that through. If they then complete any other actions and bonus actions without you bringing in the rest of your party and you end the turn then all the enemies will get to complete a surprise round but you won’t have chance to bring the rest of your party into the combat as you need to do that on the turn of one of your party, when combat is paused for you. So instead of ending the first character’s turn, you have the rest of your party attack one by one. They get their initial attack with advantage of stealth, then roll for initiative and get slotted into the combat queue, but it’s still your first character’s turn so they can’t do anything else yet. Then once you have all your party in combat, you end the turn of your first party members, and in this first round all enemies just get to gape in surprise while the rest of your party get to make any remaining actions and bonus actions in turn.

What this means is, in the first round, your whole party gets to take their actions and bonus actions with the advantage of stealth on their first attack, and the enemy gets to do nothing.

That is, exactly the same as option one except that you have to manually bring the rest of your party in, there are questions that need to be addressed about whether your party members who stay outside combat are still in turn based mode aligned to the combat (and potential cheese if they’re not) and complications if you don’t bring all your party members in at once and instead bring one in, end the first character’s turn, bring in another and then they roll better initiative than the character you’ve already moved to.

That’s why I think I’ve misunderstood your suggestion! I think you might alternatively be suggesting that subsequent party members might be able to join the combat in later rounds and newly surprise the enemy, which sounds hard to implement in practice. Surely there shouldn’t be a whole other round with surprised enemies, and it’s not clear what it would mean for one enemy to be surprised (do just they miss their next turn?) or enemies to be surprised only by one of your party. And anyway, I would suggest that any “surprise” caused by later party members joining the battle is represented by the advantage they’re getting from attacking from stealth, so adding a surprise turn at that point would be double counting.

Or perhaps I’m still misunderstanding ….

Basically what @The_Red_Queen says above. This:
seems basically the same as But the first suggestion means that players must manually bring each stealthed party member into initiative. This is needless work and in multiplayer, this means that any players in TB mode have to wait even if it's their turn, otherwise they'll advance the turn order and enemies might be able to go before the stealthed characters make their surprise attacks to enter the initiative.

The main mechanical hurdle of the latter suggestion is making sure all enemies are Surprised for their first turn. But BG3 already does something like this, no? I've seen many reports that attacking from stealth leads to the PCs getting an entire turn or two before the enemies can go.

I really do think that what you want, in essence, is covered by the Surprised rules for 5e. It gives your party an entire turn to act before any** of the enemies can go.

**depending on the exact implementation Larian/the DM chooses: whether enemies automatically get a perception check once the first attack is made.

Yes, it's a bit hard to work out what's going on when the mechanics are so off, but I think what's happening when you successfully attack from stealth or distance and then an enemy spots you and your party (which is more likely if they're not in stealth!) then things work much more as we've been saying they should. At that point, everyone - the party and all nearby enemies - roll for initiative and combat starts. But because your party attacked out of nowhere the enemies are surprised and can't do anything on their first turn. The main difference between that situation and the one we've been discussing is that the initially attacking character doesn't automatically go first, they just get their turn wherever in the queue they end up, but they get another full set of actions and bonus actions, with their first attack that started the fight apparently considered pre-combat.

I just wish it would work in a similar way when enemies didn't spot some or all of my party!

I /wish/ the shot enemy would approach your general direction. This triggers combat and they have a bonus to Initiative. The rest of their group may be surprised.

But, I do think after attacking an enemy from stealth, non-rogues should still be able to hide from the alarmed enemy using a bonus action.

They just shouldn't have advantage, nor improved hit rate... /unless/ they move a significant distance away from their og hiding spot. Like 15m away. Enough to waste a turn to regain advantage.

I'm all for stealth tactics and playing cat and mouse, but we need /something/ to... raise opponents' cunning, really 😮‍💨

Yes. Combat needs to be locked, so that once the first stealth attack is made, the rest don't have unlimited movement to get Into position. Maybe a little extra, but not just... this. It's too awkward!

The rest of the party should roll for intiative with a big boost instead of getting a free round.

Are people still believing any of that will get changed? We are half a year from release and those issues existed from right when EA started.

Its much too late to make big conceptual changes and Larian obviously has no interest to de-cheese the game because its their style.

Well, I didn’t expect them to fix reactions either, so there is still hope. And better stealth would require tweaks to ruleset, not new UI or mechanics (I don’t think so, at least). Stealth specifically goes beyond being cheesable and is just an unwieldy mechanic, so I believe that some improvements need to happen.

Yes. The answer is Yes. It's the whole point of EA, and as I recall, Larian has asked us to continue to give our feedback - you know, the whole point of this forum... Isn't it?

Why do people keep harassing us for providing suggestions and feedback on a Suggestions and Feedback forum?

Yes, exactly. I may be extremely doubtful that we’ll see a significant overhaul of the game’s handling of real-time vs pause, though you never know, but stealth could be made much more satisfying to use in the game, if not perfect, with what feel like some relatively minor tweaks to existing functionality.

Just (a) making perception/stealth checks 360 degrees when close to an NPC, (b) making hide an action (with a cunning action for rogues), and (c) having all enemies and allies within a reasonable distance roll for initiative and join combat when it starts, even if they’re hidden, would I think go a long way to making stealth usable in combat for those of us not actively trying to cheese it, even if no other change were made. Okay, (c) in particular could have some bad unintended consequences if the characters to be brought into combat weren’t carefully defined, but I don’t think that’s insurmountable or would require huge changes to what the game already does.

(Though if hide is made an action I’m going to put in a request for a cloak of camouflage or similar, equivalent to the boots of speed, that could give one other character hide as a BA! I do think hide as an action is a necessary change, but would love the option of hide as a BA for my sneaky rangers before they get Vanish at level 14, which we probably won’t even get to. I don’t think it would break balance too badly if an item like that wasn’t found until, say, most characters were likely to be level 6 or higher, and it would anyway involve sacrificing the potential benefits of another item that might go in the same slot.)

I'd rather keep stealth as a valid gameplay option, but nerf it.

Honestly, there are worse ways to cheese at Level 2-4 than stealth. All you need is a portable explosive barrel and Astarion's fire arrow cantrip.

I threw a single barrel on the first pack of gnolls. Dead. All dead. Instantly. Portable fire ball at command. 3 barrels can decimate about anything, anywhere.

What gets me is that stealth is not fun to play. Too clunky. If the entire party has it, "surprised" needs to be changed to a mere boost to your Initiative.

Enemies also can't be sitting ducks. They need some way to locate you, not skip all their turns. They already do that just fine outside turn based combat 🙁

Yeah … I know others have also said it, and I agree … barrelmancy doesn’t bother me nearly as much as stealth. I mean, I guess you could make it so explosive barrels could only be moved and not actually picked up, which I think might already the case for some objects like rocks? That would make shifting them any distance extremely tedious. I’m not desperately keen to rain on the parade of anyone who enjoys using barrels for cheesing, though, as I can quite easily ignore the fact that I can run around with and effectively teleport barrels and instead just use them when I consider “fair” (ie when they’re already near or on the battlefield).

Whereas, as you say, given the way they’re implemented, we can’t actually use ambush and stealth in combat in a way that feels smooth, fair or fun. And I really think we should be able to.

I've really kind of given up on a lot of elements in this game that I think need to be fixed to make this a really awesome game. I am now focusing more on just the ones that, if they don't do something about it, we'll totally ruin this game and take it completely out of the running as even remotely good. Stealth the way it is completely destroys gameplay. You could dress up in the noisiest armor and have the biggest weapons and sneak up too and enemy from behind without a problem. And again, even the least stealthiest character in the whole game can do the whole shoot stealth shoot tactic and win.

You can't tell me that's good mechanics.

I think I am just not good at explaining things well. What I was suggesting with this stealth part, was that in essence, all of our characters are being brought into combat at once, but only the ones in stealth are making surprise attacks because the enemy can see the others. Those in stealth who weren't first to attack would be automatically added at the beginning of initiative, but the non stealthed ones would be added in wherever. It was more meant as an option for those who find the whole surprise attack thing too much cheese, but please disregard it because it was a stupid random insomnia fueled idea and it would be even more of a pain to implement than other things.

I was hoping things would be changed to automatically bring everyone into initiative, but please disregard that idea anyway.

A side note about multiplayer, tested surprise attack/ambush with two people earlier. It is possible to both attack at the same time as expected. Don't have two more people to test with, but since it worked with two, I am sure it works with four.

Currently the game allows the ambush/surprise attack as you said, but people have been complaining that one character is getting dogpiled by all the enemies. Some have had a kneejerk reaction to this in other threads and have requested that all characters be brought into initiative immediately no matter what, disregarding that doing this in singleplayer would remove the ability to surprise attack from all but the first character. The main thing I want is some sort of system to make ambush/surprise attack less tedious and also to bring everyone into combat so other people don't have their issue any more, but without ruining a useful strategy to do it. Think we have had some good discussion on ideas for this.

I had thought of something a while back for barrels, you can only carry them in hand and enemies could stop you if they saw you moving furniture. Now I really don't care about loading backpacks with barrels, dipping, and send to camp, these are cheese options that I can easily ignore and unlike shove, they do not get used against me so I can pretend they do not exist. Stealth really needs work to be less tedious and more immersive, and shove needs to be fixed.

I'm playing Solasta Lost Valley again, and I really think Larian needs to take SOME of their stealth mechanics. Not the whole thing, but make something closer.

For example, you shoot, and enemies roll Perception versus your stealth. If you succeed, you stay hidden. If they succeed, you're no longer hidden. Then, you have to find some sort of serious shadows or cover to hide again. If you're even in an enemy's line of sight at all, forget it - unless maybe you have a special feat, something that would allow you to hide in plain sight, or something like that.

I guess what I'm getting at is Solasta is more like tabletop. If you can draw a line from an enemy to one of your characters, that's line of sight. That means that they can detect you in combat. No sight cones, and you can't see the enemy's detection zones. There is an indicator over your characters if they are sneaking, and if you are moving into an enemy's detection zones, the indicator starts to turn yellow and then red to let you know that you are getting close to being detected.

What I don't like about Solasta's stealth is that it is a bit to the other extreme. I don't feel like I can use stealth enough. My thief has +7, but I have to run around hunting for places where I can finally try to hide. So even with my thief, I still can't do the stealth, snipe, stealth thing very often.

So I'm looking for a middle ground here. I know it's difficult in a video game, but it exists.

The vision cones need to be at least 180 degrees to account for peripheral vision and simply turning your head.

But then, as mentioned many times before, when you account for hearing and smell they should really be using a detection radius instead. If they want to gamify stealth, they could make your Perception rank increase the possible detection radius. Like 15m + Perception modifier. I would get rid of the cones entirely and use a radius instead. If they insist on keeping their flawed cones, they need to add a hearing radius on top of it. And then the whole thing will just be needlessly complicated.

Abusing some narrow gamey cones in turn based mode to "sneak" with your -1 Stealth Disadvantage PC while enemies are frozen in time is not fun gameplay. And it takes away from actually stealthy builds. Larian need to stop overriding D&D mechanics with their silly gamey inventions.

And cut back on the abundance of Invisibility potions, please. A character in medium or heavy armor with Stealth disadvantage would still make noise while invisible and should be easily detectable. Stealth disadvantage should be meaningful. It's one reason to wear a Breastplate or invest in the Medium Armor Master feat. Surprising enemies and getting surprised on a high Perception character are both too easy.

I agree. It's a much simpler implementation and it works. A lot of what is wrong with BG3's implementation comes from over complicating things. Bonus action hide cranks the problem to 11 in BG3 but even for characters with cunning action the system is functional in Solasta. For example vision cones, they don't really make sense as a perception role is an abstraction of situational awareness. A character's head won't be fixed in one direction for the six seconds that a round of combat represents, and that's before considering other senses. They should have a chance of perceiving anything they could possibly perceive. That's both RAW and more or less a tautological statement. TBH I think over complication is where a lot of BG3's system weirdness stems from without much/any benefit.

I still think using Passive Perception and Stealth skills as a basic tool would work. Passive Perception of 13 means that a Stealth roll is not necessary until your character gets to within 13 feet, if sneaking up from behind. If from the side, double the range. Stealth check at 26 feet away. Front arc? Line of sight using lighting and terrain.

So, you are sneaking into Blighted Village via the east gate. Stealth check as soon as you pass through the gate because you are in line of sight front arc. Coming from the south, you take out the goblins at the south gate and sneak up on the goblins on the roof of the apothecary. You are in their rear arc. No roll is necessary until you get within like 9 feet - I think their Passive Perception is 9.

One roll is all that's needed per character per arc except Front arc. None of this having to roll every 6 seconds stuff because of the mechanics where some are yanked into battle while some are not. Front arc is the exception where you still roll every 6 seconds.

Then, if Stealth is successful, it's like invisibility. If you attack, you roll again. Period. No matter the arc. Make Stealth an Action except for Rogue Cunning Action and viola. Stealth fixed.

Larian could also adapt the One D&D current proposal for Hide
Just make a DC 15 stealth check, at appropriate (dis)advantage, and you become automatically un-hidden if you enter a creature's line of sight. Very simple, and won't clutter up the combat log with numerous perception checks.

Is this how stealing works in BG3: a check against a static DC, vs a contested X vs Perception?

Is there no in between? So, I'm fighting the skeletons in the crypt, and Astarion succeeds on his first Stealth check... but the game made him roll 2 more times before I even got a chance to use his Sneak Attack. By the time I clicked on Sneak Attack, the third roll failed (2nd also succeeded). He lost his stealth prior to being able to shoot. Why?

Man! Stealth stinks in this game.

Adding onto Astarion, I've had problems with phase spiders seeing him who technically didn't have him in their red cone. (He was on the layer above it and not getting stealth checks).

The spider queen also sometimes behaves this way. However, unlike the small ones, combat doesn't start and she spits an infinite amount of acid. Unless you get too near, anyway. Makes me worry about more bugged enemies existing. The current cone system is prone to error, display or otherwise.

It took me a lot of reloads to sneak past her because the cone was worth nothing. In the end, she got stuck staring at my remaining party. 2 minutes. 5 minutes. Wouldn't budge. Had to thunderwave scroll her off the platform. I don't think this was broken in patch 8. Some enemies got noteably wonky instead of smarter.

The medium two in that fight pretty much wasted all their turns trying to find Astarion. I think, anyway, because they kept teleporting up there and not attacking. Maybe they accidentally broke sight on the remaining party? I don't even know

(The second spider getting jumpscared after finally detecting him was funny as hell, though. They're dumbasses, so it just screamed and froze. Maybe, it was a sound of joy after teleporting into that net to attack with advantage and instead doing nothing finally paid off (out of movement, eh?).

I'm sorry. I have to bring this back to life. Larian. Sneak sucks. It's garbage.

This time, I wasn't even sneaking, but because I was outside their sight cones and they weren't facing me, they didn't trigger combat. I had to literally take my character after doing one round of hits from everyone, and I had to make him walk into the sight cone of the closest enemy to initiate combat just so I could play fair.

So, to be clear, I shot once with each of my four people, hitting enemies outside of sight cones with their backs to me. Each time I hit, my characters made auto-stealth checks and succeeded, EVEN THOUGH THEY WEREN'T CROUCHING IN STEALTH MODE. Because they succeeded in stealth EVEN THOUGH THEY WEREN'T IN STEALTH MODE, they didn't trigger combat. The enemies didn't turn around and face me or search for me or nothing. They just didn't do anything but stand there or do their typical routines.

That's GOT to go. That's terrible terrible game mechanics. We absolutely need a better stealth system before this game is fully released.

Like GM4Him, I feel like a need to bring this up :
I've recently repeated the Nautiloid part of the game (to test some things) a good number of times, and I must say : almost every time I attacked the imps, I would successfully pass a Stealth check. Mind you, I was in plain sight and not hiding 😬

Yep, those imps in the prologue are particularly rubbish at spotting us firing at them in plain sight from not all that far away: the first bunch after meeting Lae’zel are bad, then the two on the deck seem even worse.

Why is there even a check if you're standing in plain sight and not trying to hide?

And if there is a check to not initiate combat when attacking, eventually a Rogue with maxed out expertise Stealth with proper gear won't ever fail that check anyway. I don't understand why Stealth is so poorly designed.

I’m guessing it’s there as a sort of proxy check for whether the enemy spots where the attack came from, if you’re not in their line of sight. Though with the imps in particular often it seems as though you should be, and even if it does make some kind of sense I would definitely rather it were removed and combat just started. Though actually, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’d rather combat started immediately even if we are in stealth so that’s a given.

Im sorry. For me, it is a given. You shoot and hit an enemy, combat should start. Period. You HIT them. They know you're there, even if not totally aware of where you are. Everyone within a certain radius should be immediately drawn in. You HIT an enemy. ANY movement at that point could cause them to spot you because they are aware of your presence.

Cheese does not bother me as long as the gameplay and difficulty is not built around it. I never used and use barrels, I never hide chars in combat (except Astarion who is seldomly in my party), I don't use scrolls, or much shoving (4 times till lvl 5 in my current campaign). I don't care about jumping, but I would be entirely ok if "move distance + jump distance = move distance".

But stealth, or more generally the reaction of enemies to attacks, indeed is problematic. Surprise attacks from stealth are almost always a natural option if NPCs are known as enemies before the fight (therefore I never start the Gith fight other than from the dialog), so you have to deal with it all the time, it's omnipresent, and has to be right. Set bugs apart (several enemies in my current playthrough did not react at all, standing just around), there should be some changes. Some ideas in the thread sound nice, in the doubtful case I really did understand them.

My homebrew thoughts (I'm not a DnD guy) are more or less:
Stealth should be mainly for rogues and alike, the other classes shouldn't be able to use it once in combat. When starting combat you should have different possibilities. If the party is close together, to make it easy to decide, all members should be in combat and out of stealth if an NPC is hit, and able to attack with advantage in their normal turn; no double attacks but they should go first all in initiative. If they are further afar and not immediately in combat (that should be possible), so they cannot "shoot together" and have to move, they should have a stealth check but never be able to attack with advantage, stealthed or not (the person hit knows that heroes always travel in packs and expects more attacks to come, as do his/her companions).

Yup. Combat has been initiated by the player and everyone who could participate should enter the combat phase.

Yes, at first, I admittedly didn't really understand the complain about Stealth (well, outside of "hide" being a bonus action), because I didn't really encounters that issue before Patch 9. Or I probably didn't make great note of it because it didn't happen to me enough.

However, since Patch 9, it happens seemingly all the times. Or at least, way too often not to notice the issue.

So, yeah, I'm now fully on the "fix stealth" bandwagon 😅

It doesn't even have to be that complicated.

The monster AI doesn't need anything more than the following to stop the stealth cheese:

if (in combat && no target)
then (walk a set path)
else if (in combat && target)
then (kill it)

Then, like clever game designers are want to do, the pathing can overlap and create sneaking puzzles ... not that anyone actually wants to do rogue stuff other than pick locks and sneak attack, right?

edit: and, to add voice to the above .. when one party member is in combat ... ALL members within the same map set should be in combat. Example: the catacombs on the beach have two distinct inner areas separated by zone doors - within a given zone, combat should trigger everyone. Outdoor areas and cityscapes would have, naturally, a radius beyond which combat isn't entered when the party is split (obviously so as not to aggro a whole city at once).

It really worries me that this is the last patch. They've been reading these comments for two years and haven't tuned Shove to a reasonable level. They haven't implemented any kind of balanced stealth system that makes sense. Throwing enemies into lava still has a 100% success rate without any Grapple checks or Attack Rolls being made. It's only overshadowed by Shove accomplishing the same as a Bonus Action. Why aren't enemies throwing small PCs into pits and rivers? Minotaurs could just fling one PC per turn into instant death without fail, because OP is so hilariously fun gameplay.

Is this really how they want their game to play? Two years is a lot of time to get the basic gameplay right.

Oh definitely, at this stage of development anyone hoping for anything not already actively being developed behind the scenes is setting themselves up for disappointment.

Almost nothing has changed since EA started in terms of the larger issues people have raised. A lot of the game has improved in terms of UI, QoL, even the writing which I am very critical of has been tweaked remarkably over EA ...

But the D&D part of the game? It's like they don't care.

Yeah. I've given up on things like Day night, party of 6, more 5e, and SO much more. That's why I said I'm trying to hone in on the truly bad mechanics. Right now, the cheese is killing the game, especially stealth. As soon as you discover it, you can't undiscover it. It's there, and it is bad. My rogue is a goddess. She can't be defeated because Expertise for stealth, sit in shadows and snipe enemies.

Here's one of my "favorite" cheeses. Engage enemies with 1 character so they freeze in place and don't act because they are in combat mode. Then snipe them until they die with my expert stealth rogue who never joins combat because she is always making stealth checks and succeeding. She hits them over and over again outside of combat because she keeps winning the stealth check.

I didn't know she had the ability to cast Stop Time. Lol.

The problem with that cheese, in all seriousness, is that I have to be careful to not do it. To play fair, I have to make sure that when combat starts ALL my party has been brought into the fight. It is easy to miss that someone has not engaged and is sitting stealthed outside turn based mode. Drives me nuts. Either I'm one person short for a few rounds or I start shooting from stealth and am able to keep doing so.

Please Larian. The game is awesome, but it really won't be if you don't fix these things. You will literally kill the game if you don't change this and make it good.

Once again for those in the backBarbarians and the Throw Enemy action were...2 patches ago? 3?

Its matter of perspective isnt it?

You've been writing these comments for two years and haven't noticed that there is no sign of desire to tune Shove in any way.

You just can't help it, can you?

Sowing discord without any actual thoughts or content in your posts.

I gues not ...

By the ways what was your "actual thought or content" in that post i quoted?
Just to be clear.

they just need to implement a search for hidden foe mechanic for enemies. last known location is already in the game, just makes enemies head towards it