Dice is a core thing from D&D since ... EVER!!! But D&D was never an "mmo" style of game where low level enemies can soak being impaled by spears multiple times. 5e is already much lower lethality than 2e and spells of non evocation school already got massive nerf. And what Larian did? Implemented a hp bloat, destroying enchantment spells. Sleep, Charm and so on din't get buffed to reflect the fact that a low level goblin can resist being shot by a squad of 6 archers, all rolling maximum damage on their longbows.

So, let me play without the HP bloat please.

Eh. The complaints about HP bloat in BG3 are overexaggerated. Most normal goblins in BG3 have 10-15HP, which is 1-2 additional hits compared to 5e Goblins (7 HP). With their reduced AC, it still takes a similar # of turns on average to kill a goblin using attack rolls. The goblin captains have more than 15HP, but that's perfectly fine. They're elite goblins.

The issues with goblin HP bloat come from 3 things, none of which need to be solved by reducing goblin HP:
1.) Goblins' saving throws haven't been reduced to compensate for the higher HP. Thus, vs. save spells (e.g., Sacred Flame) are less effective.
Fix: Give a -X penalty to goblin STs, similar to the AC reduction.

2.) Sleep is now much less usefull. RAW, sleep on average affects 5d8=22.5 HP, meaning 2-4 seven-HP goblins. BG3 sleep affects 24HP, affecting 1-2 goblins.
Fix: Simply buff sleep to affect 30HP and it will affect 2-3 goblins. Sacrifice the chance of sleeping 4+ goblins for the certainty that you'll sleep X HP of enemies.
Also, last I heard, Sleep doesn't work properly. Enemies should sleep until they are woken up or until 1 minute passes. They DO NOT get a saving throw each turn.

3.) Height and backstab advantage give bonuses to attack rolls but not spells with saving throws. This further nerfs saving throw spells (e.g., Sacred Flame) compared to attack rolls.
Fix: Remove height and backstab Advantage from the game. Failing that, at least change height to a +2 bonus that also applies to spell save DCs (maybe Dex-only STs). Basically, change "High Ground Advantage" to the offensive version of "half cover"

Aside from goblins, I don't think there's much evidence of HP bloat in BG3. Most monsters have the same HP as they do in 5e's Monster Manual.

", it still takes a similar # of turns on average to kill a goblin using attack rolls"


Nope. You are ignoring a thing called SPELLS!!!

2x hp bloat = 50% spell effectiveness in a edition that already DESTROYED almost all spells.

10-15 is a major change on aggregate when they should have 7 as you say, and that's not a couple HP. The beefiest possible goblin should have 12, you're rolling a 2d6, so you should also see goblins with like 2-5 health, which you NEVER see. The complete skewing of variance AND the average is the problem, plus of course, the max HP being too high.

I'm not ignoring spells. Spells with attack rolls are now easier to hit (reduced goblin AC and benefits from backstab/high ground advantage) to compensate for the lowered relative damage.

Yes, leveled damage-dealing spells against enemy saving throws are less powerful, but this would again be fixed by reducing goblin saving throws. Magic missile is the only spell that cannot be fixed to correct for enemy HP buff (without just straight out increasing its damage).

Finally, you might argue that Casters still have to spend a spell slot for reduced damage whereas fighters/etc don't. This is addressed by the fact that you can rest freely in BG3. Heck, you're even punished if you don't rest as often as possible, so you might as well spend all your slots in every fight. Spell slots in BG3 are less valuable.

If HP bloat becomes a thing for enemies other than goblins and/or limitations are placed on resting, then I'll be right there with you. Otherwise, I think the weakening of damage-dealing low-level spells on a single enemy type is not that significant, at least not compared to the similar reductions

Why should goblins have 7hp? DMs in tabletop homebrew monsters all the time. Why can't Larian have homebrewed goblins?

Goblins have 7hp for a reason.

It's so that Fighters can one hit them, and Wizards can tactically crowd control them when there are too many. Burning Hands or Sleep don't feel so satisfying to use when HP buffed goblins just brush them off. And no, being able to Long Rest after every fight is not a fix, it's part of the problem.

And the lowered AC's that make Sacred Flame and Poison Spray suddenly suck compared to Fire Bolt aren't helping either.

I don't think the HP bloat is that bad in BG3 but it's definitely a wrong direction. I hope they stop experimenting on it immediately and figure out how D&D actually plays best.

First you're arguing it's not a big change, now you're saying even if it is a big change it's not a big deal. Let's stick to one argument at a time otherwise this is going to get chaotic. Do you now agree that it is a big change?

Lowering the goblins hp would make the fights a little too easy in my opinion. Let the gobbos keep their hp buff. I prefer to not have my enemies killable in one hit.

HP bloat got adjusted in patch 4. It does make an impact, but there are other issues to champion at the moment.

Granted, it's fair to ask why we're not getting options for more D&D RAW.

I prefer my fights to not take two hours. It's not like you're going to lose the goblin fight if you have the high ground regardless.

At the end of the day it really negatively impacts magic more than anything else. You may not like killing in one hit, but you better kill in one hit if you have a limited number of spell slots. That mixed with the long rest issue takes a lot of strategy out of the game and ultimately kills the fun of a wizard. You need meaningful choices to enjoy successfully doing something.

I'm arguing it's not a big change. Goblins having higher (10-15) HP doesn't make fights take longer IF chances to hit are appropriately lowered. This is where Larian has failed: they reduced AC but not Saving Throws, and they didn't properly buff Sleep.
Goblin elites (those with >15 HP) are just that, elites, and its fine for them to have more health.

I prefer the game to be more difficult. I don't want goblin battles to suddenly become too easy, which would probably happen if they reduced their hp significantly while leaving the current AC level.
The alternative would be to increase the number of goblins which is not a good idea.
The magic is very strong right now, and it does not seem that rest will suddenly be limited in any way.

They should increase the likelihood of missing then. I prefer feeling powerful, not peashooting things down. If you miss, you miss. Feels better than limp wristed punches.

You can always increase their numbers. That's sort of the point why Wizards and CC is a thing. Different dynamics than everyone just attacking one goblin at a time.

Inflict Wounds with a +5 to hit
-5e Monster Manual 7hp & 15 AC goblins: you need a 10 to hit -> 55% chance. 3d10 will kill a 7-hp goblin 98% of the time -> 0.55*0.98 = Kill a goblin 54% of the time.
-BG3 Goblin Tacker with 13HP & 9 AC: you need a 4 to hit -> 85% chance. 3d10 will kill a 13HP goblin 78% of the time -> 0.85*0.78 = Kill a goblin 66% of the time
-BG3 Goblin Brawler with 12 HP & 12 AC: you need a 7 to hit -> 70%. 3d10 will kill a 12HP goblin 83% of the time -> 0.7*0.83 = Kill a goblin 58% of the time
-BG3 Goblin tracker #2 with 10 HP & 10AC: you need a 5 to hit -> 80%. 3d10 will kill a 10HP goblin 0.91% of the time -> 0.8*0.9 = Kill a goblin 73% of the time
-BG3 Goblin Devout with 15 HP, 14 AC: you need a 9 to hit ->60%. 3d10 will kill a 15HP goblin 64% of the time -> Kill a goblin 0.38% of the time
Taking a random sample of (non-boss) BG3 goblins, there is roughly the same chance of 1HKO'ing a BG3 goblin with Inflict Wounds as in 5e. If you consider that you have Backstab Advantage for all those BG3 goblin calculations, you're even more likely to kill said goblin. Goblin values from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...lin_hpac_bloat_discussion_some_research/

This does not apply to burning hands, but that's partially because goblins still have the same Dex ST bonus as they do in 5e. All of the above goblins should have a 1-6 penalty to their STs which would do a lot towards balancing burning hands. Although I will admit that, with 3d6 damage, burning hands is still probably less likely to kill a full-health BG3 goblin (25% chance of dealing 13+ damage).

That's a fair criticism. It is definitely true that in BG3 you have a higher chance of hitting but not killing. Unfortunately that seems to go against Larian's philosophy of "missing isn't fun"...I doubt they'd make this change.

Larian, please only do this if battles are massively sped up. Battles can already be a slog with the current # of goblins.

I want the goblin battle to feel different than other battles. Right now, they don't feel much different than the gnolls or the folks raiding the tomb near the beginning. The thing about goblins is that they are individually pretty weak, but they have numbers. So make them very weak - give them low HP so you can one-shot them and give them plinky little damage, but have there be a ton of them. Give the elite goblins better armor and weapons if you want, but the goblins should have a fighting style that feels different from fighting anything else - in this case, they should swarm and overwhelm and it's no big deal if you take out a couple of them right away because there are tons of them.

This encourages the player to go for different tactics than in e.g. an ogre/minotaur fight. You want attacks that impact lots of enemies at once. Encourage players to explore all of the tools, not just find one that works and flog it.

The only problem with that, is if the player has a machine that can handle all those added enemies. A lot of players do not have top of the line graphcs cards or processors. If you change the goblins by doubling or tripling their number, and reducing their health and damage, it would be more strain on the players graphics cards and may cause crashes or even buggier game play. I think that is basically why they made those minor adjustments, of a smaller number of goblins, with slightly bloated HP and slightly higher damage.

Personally, I really had no issue with the goblins HP or anything, also I have not played since patch 4, so not sure how much they modified HP bloat with that.

Which is another problem and make the whole point of short rest to regain WLK power pointless.


Put more enemies or tougher enemies.

Also, 5e already is the second lowest lethality D&D edition, losing only to 4e.

On 2e, is not impossible to end multiple enemies in a single round.


No, it does. For casters. A single magic missle can end a goblin on 5e but not on BG3.

A Eldritch Blast on 5e at lv 1 can OHK a goblin. On BG3:EA at lv cap can't.

And note that 5e already nerfed the spells to oblivion.

Goblins on BG3 are close to 4e goblins than to 5e goblins.

I agree with this for sure. They need to optimize combat so it loads quicker. Then they can do that.

This is a next gen game. It should be optimized for next gen consoles and powerful PCs.

Agreed.

Eldritch Blast is a cantrip. This is equivalent to a fighter's basic attack. In 5e, both can kill a OHK a goblin (if they hit). In BG3, neither can, but they have increased chances to hit.

True about magic missile. Magic missile is indeed nerfed against goblins in BG3; you'd have to roll all 4's to kill a 15HP goblin.

Increasing the number of opponents will significantly increase the waiting time of the player, thus significantly increasing the time of the fight.
Fighting a huge horde of enemies is really not a good idea in a turn-based game.
Fights like a goblin camp are already long now and if you increase the number of enemies the situation will be even worse.
You just don't start with arguments that you can use AOE then because this argument sucks and only works if you have the initiative and / or enough sensible AOE spells (which you still need to hit).

Magic missile in inherently nerfed by boosting the hit likelihood as well, since it's relative value is now lower. The ripple effects of Larian's choices here totally mess with the relative value, strength, and properties of the classes.

Solve the optimization and load time problem instead of limiting the variety of the game's encounters.

How does this relate to my post?

He's saying to make the game run smoother so that you can make encounters larger. I don't agree with this. Even when lag and bugs don't slow the combat down, it still takes a long time as is. There's no need to make encounters larger just so you can decrease the hp of goblins. Spells may not be as effective as they are in 5e, but that doesn't mean they're weak. I feel pretty powerful as a spell caster. I cast sleep to great effect and use other spells when appropriate.

Lowering hp and chance to hit doesn't seem like a good idea. Say your chances to hit are lower. You shoot a spell, it misses, you shoot again next turn, it one shots the goblins. Two turns to kill a gobbo. Same as if you hit twice against an enemy with slightly more hp.

Having swarms of dumb goblins gives you opportunities for efficiencies as well. Take away all of the fancy toys from the vast majority of them - no grenades, no magic arrows, no magic of any kind. Just give them a scimitar or a shortbow (or both). Make their AI: run at the closest enemy to me and attack. Anything you can do to make their AI dead simple and fast.

You can make some encounters larger and increase variety is my point. If everything is 1-3 big enemies/5-6 medium enemies/10 small enemies, it's basically just predictable.

Anyway, I think the whole thing gets thrown off this way. If spells are weaker, cantrips become pointless, and you'll never use them because you'll rest spam, which you're incentivized to do because you have to use your stronger spells. Then you're long rest spamming and the warlock is now a pointless class, just as one example, because infinite long rest wizard is just more powerful.

So you want Larian to make the fight boring by creating BG1 quality enemies in a turn-based game?

There is a reason why in turn-based games there are practically no fights with a lot of enemies.
Each enemy added makes the fight longer. In a turn-based game, each enemy needs its own turn to move, so the more of them there are, the longer you have to wait for your own turn.
Watching your enemies move for a few minutes while waiting for your 10 second turn is definitely not fun.
Even if the AI was running instantaneously, the motion and / or attack animation still needs to appear.

It's boring if every enemy is highly strategic and in high volume as well.
It's a feedback loop, stupid enemies make smart enemies fun, and smart enemies make you appreciate the trash mobs.

The last thing I want in the game is trash fights.
I don't like fights that dont bring any challenge to the game, especially when they last too long.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on that one, because I absolutely agree with Dragon and sqrl that variety is the spice of life and gaming. I like feeling powerful once in a while, not constantly under the gun.

I want them to make it interesting by having it not be a carbon copy of every other fight. I want them to make me use different tactics against different enemies.

Unfortunately, no game developer will do that. They will make a game for the broadest playerbase, and that includes previous gen consoles and computers. How well did that play out for CP2077?

Game devs in general do seem to have a serious optimization problem. The last game I played with fantastic optimization maintaining a steady 140 fps or so was Doom Eternal. But I believe in Larian!

Concurrent turns and option to speed up animations. I have played Pathfinder Kingmaker as a Necromancer, some times with over 40 minions in the screen and had no problem. Using turn based mode BTW.

I really need to play Doom Eternal, I've been relaxing with old-school Doom.

What you describe doesn't sound interesting to me. Unless you can kill all the goblins before they get their turn, I'd have to wait out all the goblin turns where they basically just auto-attack. At this point it doesn't matter to me what tactics my party could use, it would be the sheer number and repetitivness of enemy actions which would make this fight just tedious.

Then put a stronger enemy than a mere goblin.

So we go back to the starting point.
Replacing goblins with other types of creatures is a stupid idea that would require a lot of story change for zero profit.
What does it matter if we are fighting stronger goblins or something else?

There are already bugbears and a hobgoblin. Bugbears and Hobgoblins would not change the story at all. Another ogre fight wouldn't be strange at all.

It's not that difficult, D&D 5e is designed with the idea of being able to add in monsters on-the-fly.

Let me put it this way. What's cooler in Lord of the Rings? Some sort of roided out orc, or the fight gets way tougher because "They have a cave troll?" Also I get wanting a challenge, but seriously the people who say it always has to be don't want to be Legolas sliding down the stairs on a shield once in a while and not always Legolas versus cave troll?

Correct. It is a snowball effect that Larian did in order to meld 5e and DOS as much as possible, but maintain the illusion you are still operating under 5e mechanics.

As I posted in other threads about this, you can dissect every layer of the BG3 combat to see that Larian homebrew is meant so that their DOS base is not completely alienated in this game. They are not catering to 5e people, they are catering to Larian loyalists that may not have a 5e background at all. It is in their interest not to alienate their base.

Larian not only did not put parameters around the Rest system, but also tied all the major cutscenes and story progression to resting in order to passively pigeon-hole you through resting anyway. The game is literally designed so that you are not in those tense and desperate situations of being caught without many spell slots before you need to pass difficult content. It is anti-5e, anti-DnD.

After watching gameplay footage from others on various sites, I realized the average player that is playing this game in EA is not very good at the combat. Even though the best of us know that the combat is super easy and formulaic to the point of drudgery at times, the average player sucks at combat. This is why there are a lot of complaints about the game being too hard, even though you literally can fight every single fight with all spell slots available on every character if you so wished.

Unless you are a previous DOS player, some of the Larian combat features are so absurd, the average player would not know those features were in place. I had no idea you could eat food in combat, throw barrels and people until I read about them in these forums. It's so outrageous that such mechanics exist, I would have thought them as jokes until I realized that's how DOS played. I would think the average player not familiar with DOS would think as I do. For 5e players, even more. So to cater to average players unfamiliar with DOS, the game will be made even easier...

If you understand Larian's mindframe, the combat is a joke. There's no real tactics required other than using cheese (what I would call broken) mechanics.

Speaking of Larian and game mechanic balance: you don't like combat mechanics like loading an ornate chest or backpack with as much weight as possible (literally 1000's of kg), specking into telekinesis (to lift 1000's of kg), and wits and scoundrel (to guaranty over 100% critical chance) and throwing the chest at enemies, doing 10K damage with one attack? You can't guarantee a one shot kill on any enemy, every time in 5e? Dozens of other broken mechanics are rife in every Larian game. A year after the release of Divinity Original Sin II, Larian made a massive balance patch just to try to make their game somewhat balanced for none cheese tactic players, and I considered it too little, too late. The game was still highly imbalanced regardless of cheese, and cheese strategies, whether features or exploits still existed, and they were numerous, and game breaking balance wise. Larian make the most mechanically broken games I've ever played in the genre. I could never imagine Larian making a game as nuanced, strategic, and balanced as Tower of Time. It took D&D decades of refinement to get to 5e, and while its not perfect, most would agree it's fairly mechanically balanced. Which is the exact opposite of anything Larian has ever developed to date.

The only reason I gave this game a chance was because I figured if Larian stayed faithful to the core mechanics of 5e D&D, they would have the foundation for a balanced game. I really hoped they stayed true to the numbers and mechanics of 5e, not because I am a fan of 5e, but because it was an opportunity for Larian to make their first mechanically balance game. All the numbers, all the math, and all the balancing was already done for them, how could they mess that up? I hoped that was Larian's intentions behind using the D&D licence, and 5e mechanics. Using 5e core mechanics would give Larian an opportunity to make a game on the foundations of a mechanically solid system. Instead, they made a 5e and DOS chimera, and it's a monstrosity.

Unfortunately very true.

By the way, there's a general misconception that only goblins have too much health, but if you look at the spectator it has twice as much health as it should. In the monster manual it averages like 39 health. So this is a bigger problem than goblins.

Good to know. That makes the issue of HP bloat a bit more worrying.

If it's limited to the occasional monster here or there, that's still probably fine. I'd wager that most DMs have at some point adjusted various monsters' health to be more or less challenging to the party..
But if this continues to escalate through Acts 2 and 3, buffing enemy HP to compensate for increased hit % (importantly, without making corresponding adjustments to ST, AC, etc) then yeahhh that's not the greatest...

I don’t like the hit point bloat because of its impact on spell casters, but I do understand why Larian went this direction.

First, you have players that think a miss is boring. They don’t understand the math behind swinging and always hitting an opponent with a bunch of extra hit points vs one that you hit rarely but goes down quickly when you do hit. Also, this is a low level problem, which is there in part to provide you with a sense of character development. By the time you start to approach level 10, you hardly miss an enemy anyway, so the primary underlying reason for hit point bloat “should” go away.

Second, goblins are dangerous because of their numbers but because this is a turn based game, battles take forever. Each goblin gets a turn and it can be agonizing sitting there while the AI try’s to compute a move. I often find that the AI cannot figure out what to do and so it will just spend 30 seconds thinking only to grunt and do nothing. If Larian were to send a horde of weak goblins at us, it would probably crash the engine. At the very least it would make battles painfully long.

Third, they have bloated hit points to create the sense we are fighting a boss. I am sure this is why the spectator has the increased hit points. The concept of the “boss battle” is the most overused trope in video games.

If at some point rest gets adjusted such that it is not free, spell casting classes will be destroyed if this bloat continues. I would really hate to have all my spells used up as I grind through a dungeon, only to confront a boss that has been balanced against a full strength group and with a massive hit point boost to make sure it is suitably challenging. Already by level 4 my cantrips are increasingly useless. I get to watch Lzeal hit easier than me and produce massive DPS, while I am relegated to hurling fire bolts which rarely hit. My most important spells, such as sleep, maybe take down 2 dudes for a couple rounds. If they want to continue down the path of hit point bloat, they should buff spell casters or it will be better to just take 4 fighters.

Rest will most likely not be limited (the game isn't designed for limited rest), so the farther in the game, the more powerful casters become.

While for most of the game yes, there is vestiges of things that indicate that limited rest is meant to be something. You can not long rest in the hag dungeon for example which I think indicates that there will be a lot more areas where that is a thing. If there were more areas like that could help with the resting issue and balance things down. Also HP bloat to me is iffy, for certain encounters it works and makes sense while other encounters it is tedious and makes me feel like my casters are doing very very little, it honestly should be a base by base casis. I am fine with creatures deviating from their normal stats and abilities, most every DM does that as it makes it interesting, but sometimes it would be better to stay closer to the original stats with enemies that are meant to be their normal versions.

I suspect that if rest is forbidden in some areas, they will be definitely rare. I doubt if they suddenly forbid resting in a location such as a goblin camp or an underdark there are far too many fights there (I can already imagine how annoying an underdark would be if you had to come back to the surface after each fight).
Most likely, these will be locations with a minimum number of fights, otherwise no one will forbid you to go out and rest outside.

In turn-based games, it is always better to fight a smaller number of powerful enemies, thanks to which the turns take much less time. The last thing I'd like to do is fight the goblin hordes.
These types of fights will become annoying very quickly.

Do you hear that Larian? Start already catering to the true gaming community which upon discovering they miss to much, try to figure out how to miss less and not just ask the dev to give them please some easier mode. Give us more harsh raw punishing dnd.

In my experience, it's definitely possible to clear the goblin camp in a single "day" without resting, if you pace yourself right. Logically I think it should be a "no resting" area. Can't speak for the Underdark.

Resting being limited would make sense. On Solasta, resting takes supplies and you can only rest in specific areas. Hell, On Dark Sun : Wake of The Ravager which is my favorite Turn Based RPG, UnderDark is very hard due the lack of places to rest.

Wow, now you have me curious...Who exactly is the "true gaming community"? Not sure where I saw the other comment, but it WOULD be cool if there was some more dynamic "surprise" monster encounters. Would also be cool if there was at least some respawn in areas like around the windmill, or the swamp after a while so your not running through empty area after you clear it once for the rest of the game. But not so much where it is just constant battles of trash mobs etc.