Larian Studios
First of all, yes, Solasta is ugly and the story is not very interesting.
They also do not have the full DnD licence, so there are only a few races and classes.
Now lets talk about the things that were good:

user interface:
Solasta is way better than BG3.
As I have written even before playing Solasta, BG3 needs a spell menu. The hotbar in BG3 is a total mess. Its even worse when a new icon comes up "cast spell x again", probably some hotbar pages later.
A menu for class abilities would also be great.
In Solasta I never had a problem to find the spell or ability I was looking for. (except help actions, see later)
Sorting and searching several pages of hotbars in BG3 is annoying.

game mechanics:
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.

- Please use actions, bonus actions and reactions properly, as written in the DnD rules. Solasta felt like a well balanced game. BG3 feels like complete cheese in comparison. Jumping behind enemies for backstab or shoot/hide while enemies stand there and do nthing feels so wrong.

- The way reaction are managed in Solasta is good. A window popping up "do you want to use this reaction now?" does not disturb the game flow. It does not happen every round and you can ask about several reactions at once.

- Solasta shows you at character creation and at every level up what your character can learn at later levels, what subclasses you can select and what these subclasses will give you.
In BG3 its much harder to plan your character if you do not look in the wiki.

- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.

- Proper use of (dis)advantage. BG3 gives way too many advantages. Solasta uses cover for ranged attacks, but you do not get advantage for attacking from above or behind. You only get (dis)advantage when the target is not aware of the attacker or an ability is used that causes (dis) advantage.

- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.

- Resting: It is OK if you can rest at dedicated rest points (or you build them up as in Kingmaker) or if you have to walk back to your camp. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to camp, sleep and teleport right back to the position you have been before. It feels also wrong in BG3 that the camp is NOT a place anywhere on the normal map. I hope you will use a different camp when you have more acts and visit other regions.

- There is one thing that BG3 does better: It has a dedicated help action button. In Solasta you can wake up sleeping chars or stop them from burning, but it took some time for me to find this out and I lost one battle because of it. Help should NOT reanimate a downed char. Since any form of healing can bring back a char, help is not needed for this.

Just to be sure: BG3 is a great game and I enjoyed playing it.
BG3 has a much better graphic, better characters, hopefully a better story, very interactive environment, tons of choices and many ways to approach most quests.
But I would enjoy all of this much more if it was combined with a proper use of the DnD rules.
I do not say this because I am a DnD fan. I never played PnP. I say this because Solasta felt much better balanced and combat in Solasta felt more satisfying.

One more thing:
DOS 1+2 used a few different difficulty levels.
I really like that Solasta and Kingmaker/wotr use many different setting so each player can define its own difficulty.
It would be great if you can select enemy/player stats or your own adjustment of the rules separately.
Posted By: Tuco Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 12/06/21 06:13 PM
OH NO, YOU DIDN'T.

This is not going to down well.
Incidentally I happen to agree on several points (but I can't be bothered to going into details NOW, maybe later).
This is the first we are hearing about these thing. What is this game Solsta you speak of?
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
This is the first we are hearing about these thing. What is this game Solsta you speak of?

Lol right, I wish the mods would just make a super Solasta sub forum that all posts related to it, would just be moved there.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.

No, just no. You are automatically put in combat when a character outside of combat range, gets 1 turn distance from combat. I am not going to spend 4 or 5 turns just to get a controlled character to the combat from 2 rooms over. It is just a bad idea.
There's nothing wrong with appreciating the qualities of Solasta, there's few more appropriate peers to compare with that are as relevant in the current gaming sphere, and OP makes a well structured and coherent presentation of their thoughts. Meanwhile Larian and others involved in RPG & D&D projects celebrates and cheers on the success of others, that's a win for everyone in the end of the day. There's nothing wrong with putting what players appreciate about Solasta onto paper and airing the wish to see similar approaches inspiring BG3 development.

Stay on topic please.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.

- Resting: It is OK if you can rest at dedicated rest points (or you build them up as in Kingmaker) or if you have to walk back to your camp. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to camp, sleep and teleport right back to the position you have been before. It feels also wrong in BG3 that the camp is NOT a place anywhere on the normal map. I hope you will use a different camp when you have more acts and visit other regions.
Disagree with these! I like to fast travel where I want and when I want and not have to waste time doubling back. Same with resting. I like to rest when I want and don't like restrictions and having to waste time walking back to camp.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Solasta shows you at character creation and at every level up what your character can learn at later levels, what subclasses you can select and what these subclasses will give you.
In BG3 its much harder to plan your character if you do not look in the wiki.

- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprise round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.
These two points have not been brought up enough. (I agree with most points, but really wanted to highlight these two).
Posted By: Tuco Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 12/06/21 07:57 PM
Originally Posted by Icelyn
Disagree with these! I like to fast travel where I want and when I want and not have to waste time doubling back. Same with resting. I like to rest when I want and don't like restrictions and having to waste time walking back to camp.
I hate this opinion with the fierceness of a thousand burning suns.

Also, what about actually trying the system you are dismissing, for once? The fast travel system used in Solasta is indeed brilliant in its simplicity.
Originally Posted by Tuco
Also, what about actually trying the system you are dismissing, for once? The fast travel system used in Solasta is indeed brilliant in its simplicity.
I definitely won't be playing Solasta that is for sure!
Posted By: Tuco Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 12/06/21 08:12 PM
Originally Posted by Icelyn
Originally Posted by Tuco
Also, what about actually trying the system you are dismissing, for once? The fast travel system used in Solasta is indeed brilliant in its simplicity.
I definitely won't be playing Solasta that is for sure!
You shouldn't comment on what does well or poorly either, then.
Thx Mad for this thread. And thx The Composer for trying to keep it clean.

I agree with most of your points (not that Solasta is ugly^^)

- The user interface in Solasta is very friendly user and new player friendly. You instantly know if you still have something to do or not.
You instantly know where things are. You instantly understand how things works and you can plan your turns and strategize way more easily.
It may not be pleasant for everyone's eyes but the UI do it's job perfectly well : make the user's experience easy and intuitive, requiring minimum effort on the user's part.

- The verticality is also interresting. TBH after I saw what verticality can mean, I don't really find it that great in BG3.
In BG3 the mechanics related to verticality is only shove and highground for bonuses. It's more rigid in Solasta but the game brings interresting things.
Shoving and going in a safer position / have bonuses like in BG3 of course... but flying and walking on the wall is really interresting.

I just closed the game 10 minutes ago. I have been attacked by spider that were camping (ranged poison attack) on top of trees. My solutions was to use ranged attacks with everyone or cast fly/spider climb on my melee characters.
This combat was extremely challenging and the possibilities brought by fly and spider climb were really enjoyable. I really hope Larian will make verticality a bit more deep like it can be in DnD.

- Same about the action economy and the free advantages. Baldur's Gate 3 really unbalanced the rules it's using and drastically reduce the interrests of many combinations / synergies between characters.
Having an advantage in Solasta is really rewarding. A character has entangled or dazzled (? not sure aboutthe word) an ennemy so your companions now have advantage on him. You succeed to push and prone your target so your companions have advantage.
There are so many possibilities and this is so rewardfull. In BG3 it's way too easy to have advantages and you don't feel rewarded when you have one through other mechanic than highround and bactstab...
In the end you're not rewarded at all because you have the same results but with more efforts... meaning that combats are harder and not easier (wasted spellslots and actions)

- About the character creation, I really think that Larian is working on it. Solasta makes a very good job to teach how the game works both for new players and for players that want to plan their character. This is something that is necessary and I'm confident Larian will work on it.

- About combats that should start for everyone at the same time... I agree that it should but I heard that it's very interresting and fun in multiplayer. This is probably something that could easily become an option (I personnaly would enable it but I'm a solo player).

- About reaction. I'm also confident Larian will work on that even if they have to create two mechanics to suit all kind of players. I cannot imagine that a studio that have brought so many things in the genre won't take the opportunity to create a new standard of TB games with the help of DnD.
Even if some don't like the idea of a popup, reactions in Solasta work very well. Being able to make so many different things during our ennemie's turn is very enjoyable. Combats are definitely not slower and they are way more dynamic... which is something that lacks by nature in a turn based system.

- I'm less sonfident about the fast travel and the resting mechanic. I agree that it feels completely wrong in BG3 and simple things like "fast travel trough their beautifull worldmap" would totally solve the terrible instant teleport (works the same but the feeling is totally different).
But what would happen when I'll have to travel back to where I was ? Exemple : I need to rest. Wherever I am I'm opening the worldmap. I click on the camp, time is going on and I'm fast travelling to camp (that really need to be somewhere...).
Then I'm fast travelling back, but where ? Dungeons are not so big but if the game is designed for us to camp after 1 or 2 combats, it will become boring to walk back and forth (It's not a problem to me but I think a lot of players would agree with Icelyn's answer).

It works well in Solasta, the maps are amazing, so is the fast travel mechanic and so is the resting system but their maps are closed and linear while BG3 works with some kind of open world map.
The system wouldn't work in BG3 according to me and resting spots are not possible because the camp is where our character are talking together/where story things happen (i.e Raphael). This is set in stone according to me so the solution for a better fast travelling / resting mechanic is not easy at all for BG3.
(talking about long rest, it's not gonna be hard to make things better about short rests).

Not to mention that average players will probably have to rest more often in BG3 than in Solasta. in this game you never really have to go back at camp. You're waiting for the next one. If Larian's "vision" is to allow 1 or 2 combats between resting, with a long rest point that is not on your road... It will definitely be "complicated".
This is related to the game's balance and difficulty, to the action economy, to the developpers vision of combats design... So the question is really not that easy.

Anyway just like you I really think that BG3 has a huge potential. Way more than Solasta. But Solasta feels way more satisfying to me too for now...
After all... combat (and related mechanics) account for more than half of our playing time.
Pretty much sums it up.

BG3 is more exciting and cinematic but Solasta is a better game.

I say cinematic instead of immersive because the gameplay and other goofy elements of BG3 sadly throw immersion off.

If Larian can make BG3 combat good and tactically interesting, and cut down on the cheesy barrel and shove factor it could be the best RPG of all time. Unless the story somehow fails completely after act 1, which seems doubtful.
It's very fun seeing that the people trying to dismiss the feedback with snark are the only people trying to disrupt the conversation. Maybe in a thinly veiled attempt to get the thread locked before it even gets a chance to begin, or gets a 50-page thread locked due to a 2 page derail at the end. I saw that type of behavior a lot when I used to be a moderator at a different forum. And it unfortunately generally works, unless it gets called out directly and everyone is made aware of the purpose.

I am not going to bother going over most of the points as they have been brought up quite a bit, but I will address the one thing that hasn't been talked about much.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.

This is probably a limitation of multiplayer, because as someone else already brought up, no one wants to be dragged into combat when they are probably about 3-4 turns away from being able to do anything besides moving closer. That said, having played DOS2 multiplayer recently, it turns out that DOS2/BG3 already has a sort of elegant solution to this - it just needs to be applied to everyone regardless of stealth status. If a character in stealth enters within the sight RADIUS of a hostile enemy, they should be automatically pulled into combat (like what already happens if another character wanders near a fight while not in stealth).

Problem is, it feels like the aggro range in BG3 is a lot wider than it was in DOS2. I have seen enemies and allies entering fights at a range much larger than it was in DOS2, as far as I remember, from far beyond where an enemy sight cone should extend. (This is also an indrect reason why stealth also feels so much more powerful in this game compared to DOS2. It's also why fights like the Minotaur feel a lot more unfair than they should be, being able to spot a non-stealthed party from beyond any range considered reasonable, and getting free damage with their stupid 'jump into your party from a mile away' attack - an example of trap design demanding clairvoyance.)
Posted By: Tuco Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 12/06/21 09:11 PM
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
- I'm less sonfident about the fast travel and the resting mechanic. I agree that it feels completely wrong in BG3 and simple things like "fast travel trough their beautifull worldmap" would totally solve the terrible instant teleport (works the same but the feeling is totally different).
But what would happen when I'll have to travel back to where I was ? Exemple : I need to rest. Wherever I am I'm opening the worldmap. I click on the camp, time is going on and I'm fast travelling to camp (that really need to be somewhere...).
Then I'm fast travelling back, but where ? Dungeons are not so big but if the game is designed for us to camp after 1 or 2 combats, it will become boring to walk back and forth (It's not a problem to me but I think a lot of players would agree with Icelyn's answer).

It works well in Solasta, the maps are amazing, so is the fast travel mechanic and so is the resting system but their maps are closed and linear while BG3 works with some kind of open world map.
The system wouldn't work in BG3 according to me and resting spots are not possible because the camp is where our character are talking together/where story things happen (i.e Raphael). This is set in stone according to me so the solution for a better fast travelling / resting mechanic is not easy at all for BG3.
(talking about long rest, it's not gonna be hard to make things better about short rests).
It's nothing that complex, really. It's nothing more than a simplified pathfinding on a larger scale. Even in BG3 you can already click any point of the map and your characters will walk up to that point if there aren't obvious architectonical barriers along the road.

The system simply uses a bunch of simplified "main paths" and among these it defines a bunch of key nodes the player can actually fast-travel to. You could do the same with BG3. You wouldn't need to be able to access ANY random point oft the map at will, to begin with.
A thing that could cause problems in BG3 on the other hand is that there is an implied time compression during the fast travel in Solasta that couldn't be applied in BG3 multiplayer without some weird compromise.
Posted By: Tuco Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 12/06/21 09:14 PM
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
This is probably a limitation of multiplayer
It is, but there should be a middle ground. While it's fine that the other player remains in real time when he's far away enough, it's honestly exploitable as hell that the same player can stay in real time even in the middle of the battle area as long as he's in stealth.
When a players/characters are close enough to the action they should join the turn-based timing of the battle, period.
Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
- I'm less sonfident about the fast travel and the resting mechanic. I agree that it feels completely wrong in BG3 and simple things like "fast travel trough their beautifull worldmap" would totally solve the terrible instant teleport (works the same but the feeling is totally different).
But what would happen when I'll have to travel back to where I was ? Exemple : I need to rest. Wherever I am I'm opening the worldmap. I click on the camp, time is going on and I'm fast travelling to camp (that really need to be somewhere...).
Then I'm fast travelling back, but where ? Dungeons are not so big but if the game is designed for us to camp after 1 or 2 combats, it will become boring to walk back and forth (It's not a problem to me but I think a lot of players would agree with Icelyn's answer).

It works well in Solasta, the maps are amazing, so is the fast travel mechanic and so is the resting system but their maps are closed and linear while BG3 works with some kind of open world map.
The system wouldn't work in BG3 according to me and resting spots are not possible because the camp is where our character are talking together/where story things happen (i.e Raphael). This is set in stone according to me so the solution for a better fast travelling / resting mechanic is not easy at all for BG3.
(talking about long rest, it's not gonna be hard to make things better about short rests).
It's nothing that complex, really. It's nothing more than a simplified pathfinding on a larger scale. Even in BG3 you can already click any point of the map and your characters will walk up to that point if there aren't obvious architectonical barriers along the road.

The system simply uses a bunch of simplified "main paths" and among these it defines a bunch of key nodes the player can actually fast-travel to. You could do the same with BG3. You wouldn't need to be able to access ANY random point oft the map at will, to begin with.
A thing that could cause problems in BG3 on the other hand is that there is an implied time compression during the fast travel in Solasta that couldn't be applied in BG3 multiplayer without some weird compromise.

I get the idea.

But a question : how would it work for the "maps inside the map" ? In exemple the spider lair, the goblins camp (inside) or any other dungeon we could think about.

Would you fast travel to the entrance, enter, re-open the map to fast travel to the last "checkpoint" ?
Overall, I agree. I didn't beat Solasta yet, but I definitely hope to see a sequel with better budget, move depth and dedicated writing team. Couple notes:


Originally Posted by Madscientist
user interface:
YES! Actions nicely sorted into main and bonus actions. All is easy to find, with no maintenence needed. I wish it was slicker, but foundations and design is solid. Please, please, please Larian. Remove action-bar chore from BG3. Keep hotbar for items only.


Originally Posted by Madscientist
game mechanics:
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.
Yeah, that would be cool. I am not sure if BG3 engine is set up for it. All of it seems to be revolving around flat planes, not cubes like in Solasta.


Originally Posted by Madscientist
- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.
I think it is nice for coop partners to jog over to join the fight, but yeah, I strongly beliece that combat bubble should apply to invisible party members and enemies.


Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.
I don't feel it is a biggie - if implimented well, BG3 Solasta-like fast travel would work exactly the same as it does now - it would just account for travel-time rather then be explained by teleport magic. Considering that in BG3 time doesn't move forward, I am not really sure if it is worth spending time on. It's part of overall lack of interest in keeping things even remotely grounded and as such not an issue in itself.
Originally Posted by Tuco
It is, but there should be a middle ground. While it's fine that the other player remains in real time when he's far away enough, it's honestly exploitable as hell that the same player can stay in real time even in the middle of the battle area as long as he's in stealth.
When a players/characters are close enough to the action they should join the turn-based timing of the battle, period.

100%. The current system is beyond stupid and exploitable, and anyone advocating for such a thing to remain as is doesn't have any interest in balance or having this game be taken any seriously in regards to tactical combat (or the commonly touted 'immersion' that people will somehow turn around and use as an argument against implementing proper reactions), period.

Stealth in general needs a rework, we've all seen the footage of people getting repeated attacks in stealth without entering combat, or sneaking around and dropping tons of barrels in the middle of a crowd or getting free 100% probability shoves while everyone else is locked in combat. Solasta actually had a homebrew rule in regards to attacking from stealth, and it appears to have been regarded so well that I've noted tabletop groups actually adapting it now. My own tabletop group started using it today too.

IIRC, the normal rule is as such: You get to make an attack in stealth made with advantage (unless there are conditions that would normally impose disadvantage, which negates the advantage and turns it into a regular roll), and then you are automatically revealed.

The Solasta homebrew rule is as such: You get to make an attack from stealth made with advantage (unless there are conditions that would normally impose disadvantage, which negates the advantage and turns it into a regular roll), and then you have to roll a stealth check against an enemy's perception check to determine if you remain in stealth. Depending on certain conditions, your stealth check may be done with disadvantage (if you're lit or wearing armor that imposes disadvantage on stealth checks). However, if you enter within a certain close range of an enemy's direct field of vision, you are detected no matter what - but you can also re-hide if you are able to break line of sight.

I have noted situations in Solasta where you don't make those rolls and remain in stealth regardless (possibly because the attacker is too far, but I had situations early in the game where I did stealth attacks from 10-15 feet away and didn't roll and I couldn't come up with any real possible explanation for that). Given new nature of this rule, I've chalked it up to bugs and believe the rolls should be happening no matter what. This also gives immense value to equipment that allows advantage on stealth checks and spells like Pass Without Trace, which are currently seemingly worthless in BG3 because you're already good as long as you stay out of sight cones. If something similar is extended to BG3, those checks should also happen if you use/move/drop any item with enemies nearby while you're in stealth.

Granted, I know this is a homebrew rule, but it would be an elegant solution to all the current overbearing stealth exploitation that happens in BG3, because even though Solasta's version of stealth can be expoited pretty heavily, BG3's version is somehow even more exploitable because of the time bubble/attacking from beyond enemy sight range stuff. Plus anything that forces encounters to be rebalanced around not having absurd freeform stealth shenanigans taken into account will result in a far more balanced experience.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
I have noted situations in Solasta where you don't make those rolls and remain in stealth regardless
I think that if enemy has line of sight to you, you should get the roll. There is definitely no roll if you kill enemy with the hit, and I am pretty sure there is also no role if you are attacking from undetectable height (3 tiles higher then the enemy, I think). I remember there being quite a few instances where I was surprised not to roll, so there might be some distance issue.
My point being that there is already like 3 or 4 mega threads about this subject, bringing up the same exact points. I didn't realize that asking for a mega thread (which btw was discussed by a moderator just a few days ago) was "derailing" the thread. These same points are made by the same posters ad nauseam. It has basically become a meme.
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
My point being that there is already like 3 or 4 mega threads about this subject, bringing up the same exact points. I didn't realize that asking for a mega thread (which btw was discussed by a moderator just a few days ago) was "derailing" the thread. These same points are made by the same posters ad nauseam. It has basically become a meme.

Doing this and nothing else is an act of derailment, full stop. It's one thing to bring it up while still addressing the subject matter, but you've made three posts in here with only one talking about the subject matter thus far.

Originally Posted by Wormerine
I think that if enemy has line of sight to you, you should get the roll. There is definitely no roll if you kill enemy with the hit, and I am pretty sure there is also no role if you are attacking from undetectable height (3 tiles higher then the enemy, I think). I remember there being quite a few instances where I was surprised not to roll, so there might be some distance issue.

Yeah, I suppose it makes sense if the enemy cannot establish line of sight to you, and obviously if you get the kill then there is no perception check to contest your stealth. But if the enemy survives but can't establish line of sight, I think it would make sense for rolls to happen anyway. They should still get to roll a perception check (with disadvantage) and you should get to roll a stealth check (with advantage).

The current implementation still needs some refinements, but it's still pretty good. :P
Posted By: Tuco Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 12/06/21 11:04 PM
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
These same points are made by the same posters ad nauseam. It has basically become a meme.
Like... Who?
The OP hasn't been active on this forum since April and a quick check doesn't show an overabundance of Solasta.
I hardly ever mentioned it first and I rarely even stayed on the topic long enough of discussing the details (in fact I think so far I've seen more chances to commenting on people reacting to Solasta being mentioned than on the game's specific mechanic themselves).
Blackheifer more often than not joins in to shit on the game, since he doesn't seem particularly fond of it.

And this already cover everyone in the thread before your intervention.

Can't speak for others coming in later (and I can't be bothered to go and stalk their post history to check "HOW MANY TIMES THEY SAID THE DIRTY WORD") but since a moderator gave his permission to discuss the game from a pertinent angle I'm not sure what's the point of antagonizing them for joining in.
Well, I could probably make few guesses, but let's say it's for "consistency" and leave it at that.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Doing this and nothing else is an act of derailment, full stop. It's one thing to bring it up while still addressing the subject matter, but you've made three posts in here with only one talking about the subject matter thus far.

Wow, didn't know you got hired on as a mod on this forum (I know it means a lot to you considering that you bring it up so often that you used to be one). Congratulations.

I actually made 2 posts, once in regards to not agreeing with a point he made, and one replying to a Blackheifer's joke, both were in regards to the topic which was Solasta. These constant Solasta posts might be better in a mega thread (which btw, was a discussion not days ago from a mod posting the same sentiment and if I remember correctly, that it was something actually being discussed (they might not have CC'd you since your new to the job). NIETHER were derailing the thread. I am also pretty sure I was replying to Composer, and not you. So maybe keep in mind that you aren't actually a mod in here, it is their job to deem something derailment. wink
Okay, time to re-rail this because certain people insist on continuing this train of thought and proving me right.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.

I don't think this is happening unless Larian overhauls their engine. Even though it's been about three months since we've last heard from them, I don't expect that this is what they're spending development resources on. Especially when realistically it'll only affect the Harpy fight (although the spider fights could be redesigned for this too).

Fun fact: Harpies and Phase Spiders DO NOT normally have ranged attacks, they are a deliberate addition. They normally only possess melee attacks, and the main counter to Harpies for melee characters is to ready action an attack for when they swoop down to strike. (Spellcasters could also use spells like Sleep to force them down and take fall damage in the meantime.)
So I have about 30+ hours in on Solasta and finished a playthrough. I have 800+ hours in on Bg3.

I find these comparisons odd personally because BG3 is the larger more ambitious game by a few orders of magnitude. Its strange to compare it to a game like Solasta which takes no risks and constrains your actions to the point of having no agency.

Btw no one that I can think of on this entire forum is arguing that the exploits (and there are MANY) in BG3 should not be closed, fixed, or straight removed. No seriously, who are these people who are pro game-breaking exploits?

Solasta is a finished game, BG3 is has at least another year in development. BG3 is also building off an engine that needs extensive modification still to make it work for 5E rules. Personally I am not too concerned about those rules because one way or another they will be fixed. The Mod community will step in and tighten that stuff up, but hopefully Larian does it themselves.

For me- the real value in BG3 is in all the areas that Solasta fails to have any skin in the game. The Multiplayer, the ability to be a Platform, DM Mode.

I played Solasta. It was good. I doubt I will play it again, as there is no replay value. Solasta - simulates Vanilla 5e Combat to a decent degree. I say Vanilla because even in combat it heavily constrains actions. You can't throw anything, not flasks, not bombs, not shoes. The AI is very basic and despite the lack of tactical options doesn't do anything surprising. The difficulty settings are all about buffing the creatures but not improving their thinking. The game can be cheesed and has meta builds - I mean Spirit Guardians/Wall of Fire will kill 90% of encounters. I had spidey shoes on my melee characters pretty quick and that took care of most verticality.

The most time-intensive fight was the magic spitting forest tree spiders who stay in their trees and never chase you but will shoot at you, until they can't then they just stay where they are while you line of sight them one-by-one. I guess those are tactics if you like. Doesn't Larian get shit for having spiders that spit stuff? I swear I heard that.

And just fyi, Solasta 100% homebrews some majorly OP FEATS. Twin Blade Defense? Follow Through?

By the end of the game I was pretty bored to be honest. The maps don't have a lot of originality, the world feels empty and unresponsive.

Solasta does have the better UI but I never expected that the current UI wouldn't be redesigned one way or another.

it is my hope that the Solasta team made enough that we one day see a Solasta 2 with Multiplayer and an engine that allows a lot more freedom.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
I have noted situations in Solasta where you don't make those rolls and remain in stealth regardless (possibly because the attacker is too far, but I had situations early in the game where I did stealth attacks from 10-15 feet away and didn't roll and I couldn't come up with any real possible explanation for that). Given new nature of this rule, I've chalked it up to bugs and believe the rolls should be happening no matter what.

If you kill your target, it doesn't make you roll.
Originally Posted by grysqrl
If you kill your target, it doesn't make you roll.

Yeah, I know that. I'm talking about situations where they survive and they don't roll anyway. I've had a couple situations like that.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Please use actions, bonus actions and reactions properly, as written in the DnD rules. Solasta felt like a well balanced game. BG3 feels like complete cheese in comparison. Jumping behind enemies for backstab or shoot/hide while enemies stand there and do nthing feels so wrong.

- The way reaction are managed in Solasta is good. A window popping up "do you want to use this reaction now?" does not disturb the game flow. It does not happen every round and you can ask about several reactions at once.

To be fair, the frequency of pop-ups did start to get rather annoying later in the game as I unlocked more reaction/conditional abilities, but it's nothing a few toggles can't solve (as in, we should get an option to not ask to counterspell against an identified spell of 2nd level or below, unless the spell will possibly inflict lethal damage against a party member or cause an incapacitating status effect). Or not to shield against any attack that would inflict less than 20% of the character's HP. And I'm pretty sure everyone now is in agreement that they'd rather have working reactions than none at all. Aside from the few people citing immersion when much of the rest of the game's combat design is certainly already lacking in it.

On another note, Shove needs an overhaul too. Or well, one could argue it IS working properly as is, you're not shoving things off a cliff unless they're already at the edge of one to begin with, the only thing goofy about it is the arc at which things fly. But it's missing the second half, the ability to shove enemies prone instead.

When you think in the long term, the current distance shoving only design will just result in making fights longer than they should be later on. Shove and jump/disengage are powerful as bonus actions now precisely because we are stuck at level 4, when the majority of classes do not yet have bonus actions to speak of. Nor do most classes have Extra Attack yet. When certain classes unlock more bonus actions, suddenly trying to shove and jump every turn isn't that attractive (such as Bards using Bardic Inspiration). One could argue that their existence as a bonus action is a slight indirect nerf to the bonus action heavy classes, and a heavy buff to classes that don't possess that many to begin with.

Anyway, sure, you can shove that enemy off of a cliff, but that's also several turns that your melee won't be beating their faces in with 2 attacks per turn instead. Upon further consideration, shove is only simultaneously that strong and silly now because the cost/benefit analysis is currently firmly in the 'shove things off to inflict fall damage and give advantage to ranged party members/disadvantage to the target' camp.

BUT, if you were given the option to shove things prone instead? Suddenly one party member just needs to spend one bonus action to knock something to their knees, and if they succeed, ALL melee party members will get advantage rolls against them until the enemy's next turn. And this also means each melee party member doesn't have to re-enact a bad edgy fanfic by spending their own bonus actions jumping behind them for backstab advantage. Hell, one could use this as justification for removing backstab advantage entirely.

Stuff like this is why it's absolutely critical that EA should go up to level 5 at some point before release, because a lot of things can completely change when certain class features, the next tier of spells, and extra attack comes into play.

Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I played Solasta. It was good. I doubt I will play it again, as there is no replay value. Solasta - simulates Vanilla 5e Combat to a decent degree. I say Vanilla because even in combat it heavily constrains actions. You can't throw anything, not flasks, not bombs, not shoes. The AI is very basic and despite the lack of tactical options doesn't do anything surprising. The difficulty settings are all about buffing the creatures but not improving their thinking. The game can be cheesed and has meta builds - I mean Spirit Guardians/Wall of Fire will kill 90% of encounters. I had spidey shoes on my melee characters pretty quick and that took care of most verticality.

The most time-intensive fight was the magic spitting forest tree spiders who stay in their trees and never chase you but will shoot at you, until they can't then they just stay where they are while you line of sight them one-by-one. I guess those are tactics if you like. Doesn't Larian get shit for having spiders that spit stuff? I swear I heard that.

And just fyi, Solasta 100% homebrews some majorly OP FEATS. Twin Blade Defense? Follow Through?

There is a slight difference in context between both games that makes the criticism much heavier for one instead of the other.

Solasta's potential cheese is based more on the encounter design and the tools available to your team. Wall of Fire and Spirit Guardians are crazy, but they are legitimate spells that you can't get until you're about halfway through the game.

BG3's issue is that the cheese is solely revolving around the combat mechanics themselves that are already there from the very beginning of the game, they completely overshadow and throw off the entire cost/benefit analysis for many early game spells, and it's obvious that entire encounters are designed around those combat mechanics existing. That's why BG3's cheese is several magnitudes higher in severity.

Solasta's OP feats are a bit forgivable considering they are literally forced to homebrew that stuff. But I don't think there was anything forcing Larian to implement the questionable cheese mechanics in BG3.

Your example of spitting spiders in Solasta is slightly disingenuous. The early level spiders only possess melee attacks, and I didn't run into any spitting spiders in Solasta in the EA content that was stated to run for half of the game (I am personally waiting until I am done with WotR beta phase 2 to restart Solasta from the beginning). I think by the time I'd run into them, I'd have a bunch of fireballs available to burn them with. The BG3 phase spiders have AoE spits, which is more than a bit nuts for an early game encounter where you have very few ranged options and pushes any fight involving them into what I'd call 'trap clairvoyance design'. Granted, I wasn't too miffed because I am already used to DOS2-style encounter design, but it would feel insane to anyone else.

(That said, while I still think height advantage/disadvantage should be shot into the sun, it might be less of a problem once we get more spells that do half damage on saves. Which, again, we're not going to have as long as we're stuck at level 4 for EA, which heavily contributes to the perception that these new advantage mechanics are so much more powerful for the early game.)

Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Btw no one that I can think of on this entire forum is arguing that the exploits (and there are MANY) in BG3 should not be closed, fixed, or straight removed. No seriously, who are these people who are pro game-breaking exploits?

There aren't any here on this forum as I assume our admittedly relentless crowing about all of these issues drove such people away from here. But there's a fair amount of these people on the BG3 subreddit.

Though thankfully, even that place is starting to wake up to this sort of thing. What's this now? Another thread asking for reactions to actually act like reactions? The one person fine with the system as is got downvoted to oblivion? You love to see it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/nyg8ou/we_need_reactions_to_be_reactions/
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Okay, time to re-rail this because certain people insist on continuing this train of thought and proving me right.
Wow, I have never seen anyone so desperate to have the last word. But if it makes you feel better that your somehow being proven right, that is fine.

Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
There is a slight difference in context between both games that makes the criticism much heavier for one instead of the other.

Personally, I think that is just an excuse to justify ANY criticism towards BG3.

Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Solasta's OP feats are a bit forgivable considering they are literally forced to homebrew that stuff. But I don't think there was anything forcing Larian to implement the questionable cheese mechanics in BG3.

So for some reason, now what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander. It is kind of hypocritical to say that homebrew in Solasta is ok, but not in BG3 (just because you personally like the homebrew of Solasta). As a former "mod" for a gaming forum, you should be familiar with being able to remove your personal preference, and judge both by the same principle.

Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Your example of spitting spiders in Solasta is slightly disingenuous. The early level spiders only possess melee attacks, and I didn't run into any spitting spiders in Solasta in the EA content
How are you even able to accuse his example of spitting spiders, when you admittedly, have not played the live version of the game? Isn't that comment, by definition, disingenuous?

Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Btw no one that I can think of on this entire forum is arguing that the exploits (and there are MANY) in BG3 should not be closed, fixed, or straight removed. No seriously, who are these people who are pro game-breaking exploits?

Solasta is a finished game, BG3 is has at least another year in development. BG3 is also building off an engine that needs extensive modification still to make it work for 5E rules. Personally I am not too concerned about those rules because one way or another they will be fixed. The Mod community will step in and tighten that stuff up, but hopefully Larian does it themselves.

It is simple, it is a way to generalize, and make anyone else's points that do not match theirs as trivial, or illegitimate (I can't wait for the "passive aggressive" and "irony coming from" comments to come, that is the general tactic). It is used a lot today, it is easier to brandish someone as a fanboy that loves everything about a company, or stupid as some have said, or lacking experience in tactical games etc. That way, they can prop up their points and make them more "legitimate". It is commonly used on Twitter etc to beat down any conflicting viewpoints into submission.

The irony of this is that if you go to the Solasta forums, where people try the reverse and try to start hate on BG3 (not saying the OP of this thread did that, actually his was laid out decent overall, more the usual suspects), the majority want and enjoy both games. The overall opinion is the more D&D the better, and they look forward to the differences (where here, they want a replica). Of course people have justifiable discussions about little things like inventory management, the ugly group chain, the UI but none of this Larian bashing or these "mechanic sux" attitude. It is actually a pretty interesting comparison between communities.
Solasta's EA was about half of the game. BG3's EA is probably about 1/4th-1/3rd of the game as far as anyone knows. Only one throws teleporting AoE spitting spiders at you at level 3-4, and it isn't the one with an EA phase that ran for half the game.

I don't have a problem with homebrew. I have a problem with UNBALANCED homebrew based on the context, and most of BG3's homebrew altered the core mechanics themselves. I have argued repeatedly that I would welcome such things if they actually improved the system, but it appears the majority are in agreement that few (if any) of the changes BG3 did to the core combat systems had any positive long term effect on the game.

Plus, there is a huge ass difference between homebrew feats, and outright freely giving advantage for height/backstab, and I'm pretty sure everyone in this forum is smart enough to understand that distinction. After all, the feats you can ignore/avoid using. But you can't ignore height advantage. smile

For example, if I had any say in this, I'd alter Paladins in BG3 so that you can smite with ranged weapons, because it'd suddenly open up a lot of build variety. Then I could make a really fun archer Bard/Paladin multiclass.

Not going to respond to the personal bait otherwise.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Solasta's EA was about half of the game. BG3's EA is probably about 1/4th-1/3rd of the game as far as anyone knows. Only one throws teleporting AoE spitting spiders at you at level 3-4, and it isn't the one with an EA phase that ran for half the game.

Compared to the ease of most encounters (btw, with no barrels), the spider fight was the most interesting. Different strokes, for different folks. It is also a perfect example of coming across a difficult enemy, in any zone. This is not a "level by zone" game like WoW. If you go in the wrong cave, you can run into a monster that can kick your ass, personally, I like that.
I would also personally happily take a kick to my non-existent nuts if it turns out that the primary reason we haven't heard from Larian in so long is because they've been working on programming a proper reaction and ready action system, which I imagine would have probably resulted in having to rebalance a few encounters too. Then I could leave this place knowing that everything's going to be good.

That's probably the number 1 priority right now. Everything else probably won't really matter very much in the context of those systems working properly.

Also, most of Larian's fanbase are here because of DOS2. DOS2's primary draw was its combat system. It's almost weird that people here are taking offense to people pointing out that BG3's combat system isn't in a good spot right now.
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Okay, time to re-rail this because certain people insist on continuing this train of thought and proving me right.
Wow, I have never seen anyone so desperate to have the last word. But if it makes you feel better that your somehow being proven right, that is fine.

Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Solasta's OP feats are a bit forgivable considering they are literally forced to homebrew that stuff. But I don't think there was anything forcing Larian to implement the questionable cheese mechanics in BG3.

So for some reason, now what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander. It is kind of hypocritical to say that homebrew in Solasta is ok, but not in BG3 (just because you personally like the homebrew of Solasta). As a former "mod" for a gaming forum, you should be familiar with being able to remove your personal preference, and judge both by the same principle.
Other forum members are allowed to have opinions that disagree with you. And in no way does anyone have to be all for homebrew or all against homebrew. Homebrew is situational and it's very normal to like homebrew X, but not homebrew Y.

Could you please not make personal accusations and focus on the discussion of the thread?

Originally Posted by Pandemonica
The irony of this is that if you go to the Solasta forums, where people try the reverse and try to start hate on BG3... the majority want and enjoy both games. The overall opinion is the more D&D the better, and they look forward to the differences (where here, they want a replica). Of course people have justifiable discussions about little things like inventory management, the ugly group chain, the UI but none of this Larian bashing or these "mechanic sux" attitude. It is actually a pretty interesting comparison between communities.
Nice to know that more people agree that Baldur's Gate 3 would be better if it became more D&D rules-as-written.
Are you serious?

Also, you may want to re-read that second quote, because you obviously missed the point, or intentionally misrepresented the point of the entire paragraph. The fact that you try to state I have a problem with people with different opinions over Saito's and others actions in that regards is almost laughable.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
First of all, yes, Solasta is ugly and the story is not very interesting.
They also do not have the full DnD licence, so there are only a few races and classes.
Now lets talk about the things that were good:

user interface:
Solasta is way better than BG3.
As I have written even before playing Solasta, BG3 needs a spell menu. The hotbar in BG3 is a total mess. Its even worse when a new icon comes up "cast spell x again", probably some hotbar pages later.
A menu for class abilities would also be great.
In Solasta I never had a problem to find the spell or ability I was looking for. (except help actions, see later)
Sorting and searching several pages of hotbars in BG3 is annoying.

game mechanics:
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.

- Please use actions, bonus actions and reactions properly, as written in the DnD rules. Solasta felt like a well balanced game. BG3 feels like complete cheese in comparison. Jumping behind enemies for backstab or shoot/hide while enemies stand there and do nthing feels so wrong.

- The way reaction are managed in Solasta is good. A window popping up "do you want to use this reaction now?" does not disturb the game flow. It does not happen every round and you can ask about several reactions at once.

- Solasta shows you at character creation and at every level up what your character can learn at later levels, what subclasses you can select and what these subclasses will give you.
In BG3 its much harder to plan your character if you do not look in the wiki.

- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.

- Proper use of (dis)advantage. BG3 gives way too many advantages. Solasta uses cover for ranged attacks, but you do not get advantage for attacking from above or behind. You only get (dis)advantage when the target is not aware of the attacker or an ability is used that causes (dis) advantage.

- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.

- Resting: It is OK if you can rest at dedicated rest points (or you build them up as in Kingmaker) or if you have to walk back to your camp. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to camp, sleep and teleport right back to the position you have been before. It feels also wrong in BG3 that the camp is NOT a place anywhere on the normal map. I hope you will use a different camp when you have more acts and visit other regions.

- There is one thing that BG3 does better: It has a dedicated help action button. In Solasta you can wake up sleeping chars or stop them from burning, but it took some time for me to find this out and I lost one battle because of it. Help should NOT reanimate a downed char. Since any form of healing can bring back a char, help is not needed for this.

Just to be sure: BG3 is a great game and I enjoyed playing it.
BG3 has a much better graphic, better characters, hopefully a better story, very interactive environment, tons of choices and many ways to approach most quests.
But I would enjoy all of this much more if it was combined with a proper use of the DnD rules.
I do not say this because I am a DnD fan. I never played PnP. I say this because Solasta felt much better balanced and combat in Solasta felt more satisfying.

One more thing:
DOS 1+2 used a few different difficulty levels.
I really like that Solasta and Kingmaker/wotr use many different setting so each player can define its own difficulty.
It would be great if you can select enemy/player stats or your own adjustment of the rules separately.


Agree to it all.
Originally Posted by The Composer
There's nothing wrong with appreciating the qualities of Solasta, there's few more appropriate peers to compare with that are as relevant in the current gaming sphere, and OP makes a well structured and coherent presentation of their thoughts. Meanwhile Larian and others involved in RPG & D&D projects celebrates and cheers on the success of others, that's a win for everyone in the end of the day. There's nothing wrong with putting what players appreciate about Solasta onto paper and airing the wish to see similar approaches inspiring BG3 development.

Stay on topic please.


Beautifully put! =)
Err... I realise this isn't "staying on topic" but... I just thought it was... good. Ehh.. sorry. I will get back on topic now. =)
Stop, guys. I'm dropping this argument, no one else needs to come in too.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.

Coming back to this topic, I'm not entirely sure adapting Solasta's fast travel system would work out in BG3 at all. Solasta is actually very linear, so it works there. BG3's layout is as such that it's very possible that you can accidentally travel right into a combat situation (and probably step into a couple damage puddles across the way, like that one path between the crashed ship and the waypoint Gale hops out of). It's not something I'd really consider a priority.

People probably have an issue with the way the waypoints are presented in the game too, but I don't particularly mind them much. I suspect there's a lore reason for them, the same way Solasta has that network of major gates that allow you to teleport to different parts of the world map when you discover and activate them. Though it's implied in that game that everyone with access can use them once you get them working, which two of the game's cities use to maintain a political alliance.

Though if there actually isn't a lore explanation for BG3's waypoints (which I suspect there should be an explanation considering Gale literally came out of one, which means he knows what they are and the party's ability to use them would likely be explained by a Gale-related cutscene that probably hasn't been implemented yet), I'd probably just chalk it up to another carryover from DOS2, which had waypoints that worked exactly the same way.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
There is a slight difference in context between both games that makes the criticism much heavier for one instead of the other.

Solasta's potential cheese is based more on the encounter design and the tools available to your team. Wall of Fire and Spirit Guardians are crazy, but they are legitimate spells that you can't get until you're about halfway through the game.

Your example of spitting spiders in Solasta is slightly disingenuous. The early level spiders only possess melee attacks, and I didn't run into any spitting spiders in Solasta in the EA content that was stated to run for half of the game (I am personally waiting until I am done with WotR beta phase 2 to restart Solasta from the beginning). I think by the time I'd run into them, I'd have a bunch of fireballs available to burn them with. The BG3 phase spiders have AoE spits, which is more than a bit nuts for an early game encounter where you have very few ranged options and pushes any fight involving them into what I'd call 'trap clairvoyance design'. Granted, I wasn't too miffed because I am already used to DOS2-style encounter design, but it would feel insane to anyone else.

Wall of fire/Spirit Guardians is OP ONLY because the AI and encounters in Solasta are not strong. An intelligent monster shouldn't walk into a wall of fire unless they are immune to fire. They would look for another option, or move to ranged strikes. Yet I have never seen the AI do anything particularly smart.

On top of that, I am level 10 and in all the encounters I have yet to have anyone use a powerful spell on me. Every single time its a low level Magic missile or a Cantrip at most. Not once has anyone thrown a fireball or lightening bolt at me or my group.

Compared to Bg3 and enemies WILL use 1st and 2nd level spells at you all the time. Sleep and magic missile are common but I have seen Flaming Spheres, Thunderwave, Bane, Bless and a host of other decent 1st and 2nd level spells. Enemies will try to drop stuff on you, throw things at you (flasks and grease), use the environment, shove you off cliffs, knock out concentration, focus down high value targets, or casters, they seem to know about advantage and will go after anyone who has their back turned and they will try to get height advantage on you. They are jerks. I love it.

Solasta is a good game to learn about a limit range of D&D combat rules. There is also a lot of detail oriented micro-management (optional). Its not a challenging game by any measure even on the highest difficulty settings. And spending the time to make sure you are organized and have everything you need never pays off with encounters that really test your preparedness. I ended up with a stack of revive and raise dead scrolls I never used because no one ever died on my side...or got knocked out.
Perhaps. I did have two goblin shamans throwing two lightning bolts at my whole party once on the way to the third gem (along with killing their comrades that engaged my party in melee), which was quite a trip.

I suspect their supposed next project taking place in the same world is going to significantly up the base difficulty, because a lot of people have been saying that the latter half of the game has been too easy (except for a certain stretch where resting is apparently difficult).
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Perhaps. I did have two goblin shamans throwing two lightning bolts at my whole party once on the way to the third gem (along with killing their comrades that engaged my party in melee), which was quite a trip.

I suspect their supposed next project taking place in the same world is going to significantly up the base difficulty, because a lot of people have been saying that the latter half of the game has been too easy (except for a certain stretch where resting is apparently difficult).

If the AI doesn't have the sense to avoid targeting its own side then its a serious problem. 90% of the problem with the difficulty is the bad AI.

And yes, the most challenging thing they had was a waves-of-enemies survival encounter, but even then I didn't lose anyone. The actual endgame fight is such a huge letdown.

But hand to God, they should not have released this game with that bad AI. What's the point of faithfully crafting a authentic 5e rule system and not provide a good encounter?
Though I've not finished the game yet, I did notice that the AI's intelligence and aggressiveness can be controlled in the difficulty option settings... for those saying that it was very silly, what setting were your enemies on (I'm mostly curious because I'm only a little way into my fresh play through now that the game has released)?
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
If the AI doesn't have the sense to avoid targeting its own side then its a serious problem. 90% of the problem with the difficulty is the bad AI.

And yes, the most challenging thing they had was a waves-of-enemies survival encounter, but even then I didn't lose anyone. The actual endgame fight is such a huge letdown.

But hand to God, they should not have released this game with that bad AI. What's the point of faithfully crafting a authentic 5e rule system and not provide a good encounter?

To be fair, that goblin example can be justified as the Shamans considering their foot soldiers to be expendable. I've seen similar behavior with AoE attacks in DOS2 and BG3 too, so it's not far fetched. The double lightning bolts did result in a party wipe. I suspect enemies in BG3 that possess Fireball and Lightning Bolt will absolutely do the same thing. Considering I've already seen datamined BG3 Lightning Bolt and uh, Larian should think about dialing back its maximum attack range...

Originally Posted by Niara
Though I've not finished the game yet, I did notice that the AI's intelligence and aggressiveness can be controlled in the difficulty option settings... for those saying that it was very silly, what setting were your enemies on (I'm mostly curious because I'm only a little way into my fresh play through now that the game has released)?

I can't say too much about difficulty options as I haven't fiddled with them personally, but I remember one of the most common complaints about the hardest difficulty of Solasta back in the EA phase was how enemies would hard focus on killing a downed party member, which let people cheese fights by playing ping pong with Healing Word. It's the same problem BG3 has, actually.

It's honestly not too much worse than enemies in BG3 always seemingly hard targeting the lowest AC character if they're within attack range, even if they expose themselves to extreme danger doing it.

Ironically, Pathfinder WotR probably has the most varied AI out of all three games right now. I've observed enemies switching targets if they miss too much, some will prioritize whoever did the most damage to them, some will just bang uselessly against your tank because they're too dumb to know any better, and some will begin fights prioritizing the main character because they recognize them as the party leader and had probably just insulted them in pre-battle dialogue. But you know it's deliberate because it's generally consistent among the different enemy types.
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
Also, you may want to re-read that second quote, because you obviously missed the point, or intentionally misrepresented the point of the entire paragraph. The fact that you try to state I have a problem with people with different opinions over Saito's and others actions in that regards is almost laughable.
What you wrote is what you wrote.
Originally Posted by Niara
Though I've not finished the game yet, I did notice that the AI's intelligence and aggressiveness can be controlled in the difficulty option settings... for those saying that it was very silly, what setting were your enemies on (I'm mostly curious because I'm only a little way into my fresh play through now that the game has released)?

I played on Scavenger Mode, which is a step above Authentic and enables the deadlier AI. I am currently doing Cataclysm mode but I don't see a big difference and honestly I kind of just got bored and stopped playing.

Even on just Authentic mode - without the 'deadlier ai'- the enemies should use AOE spells sometimes, or any spells really.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by Niara
Though I've not finished the game yet, I did notice that the AI's intelligence and aggressiveness can be controlled in the difficulty option settings... for those saying that it was very silly, what setting were your enemies on (I'm mostly curious because I'm only a little way into my fresh play through now that the game has released)?

I played on Scavenger Mode, which is a step above Authentic and enables the deadlier AI. I am currently doing Cataclysm mode but I don't see a big difference and honestly I kind of just got bored and stopped playing.

Even on just Authentic mode - without the 'deadlier ai'- the enemies should use AOE spells sometimes, or any spells really.

They are. Shaman (orc I guess) used lightning bolt close to every time I see them. And they walked to target more characters, avoiding their friends at the same time.

And ennemies often move in/out your firewall and your spirit guardian, which means that the AI is trying to avoid damages... but the creatures just does not have any tools to range attack.
Would it be a better AI if they were just staying away while you're killing them ? The AI is not the problem. Creatures lack of tools / ranged attack may be one...

What's doing the AI in BG3 when the creatures cannot attack you for any reason ? Slowly dying without moving. Is that because the AI is not smart enough ?
As an exemple, just think about the owlbear when you're going "higher"

On the other hand if every creatures had tools and were smart enough to avoid such spells... These spells would be useless whatever we're talking about Solasta or BG3.

Just like in BG3, the ennemies use the verticality at their advantage with more variation in Solasta, they push you but also prone you, they play with the light, try to kill your characters, try to engage your ranged, use bane, slow and other debuff, use thunderwave a lot (which is less spectacular and OP than in BG3), and so on,...
Originally Posted by DragonSnooz
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
Also, you may want to re-read that second quote, because you obviously missed the point, or intentionally misrepresented the point of the entire paragraph. The fact that you try to state I have a problem with people with different opinions over Saito's and others actions in that regards is almost laughable.
What you wrote is what you wrote.
Here, let me explain this simply since you seem to either not understand, or want to intentional misconstrue what I wrote. They are not saying they want BG3 on those forums to be strict D&D, they are saying they are glad 2 d&d BASED (I am assuming you know the difference between BASED and Replicate) games are coming out. Two different type of games to play. They are not saying they want a RAW D&D simulator just like Solasta. Hopefully that explains it to you since you want to keep trying to push this misrepresentation of what I was saying. The majority of the commenters are on that forum has the basic complaints about UI, group linking etc. Like I mentioned above, but DO NOT want a copy of Solasta mechanics.

Not to mention, I love the irony of the fact, that on the Solasta forums, they are looking forwards to BG3 (with some modifications to UI, group chain and inventory), and posters here are trying to USE Solasta as a hammer to beat BG3 with. When someone tries to post negative over analyzation of BG3, Solasta posters are defending it).
Okay, this is a bit too much for me to ignore. I assume you are referring to this thread on the Solasta forums.

https://forums.solasta-game.com/forum/baldurs-gate-3?page=3

The majority of the posts in that thread are from before BG3 EA even started. And the very last post in that thread was from 5 months ago.

A lot happened in 5 months. For instance, an entire patch happened. Community feedback has taken a sharp turn towards the systems needing an overhaul. And honestly, Solasta had little to do with that beyond how reactions are implemented. We've always had people arguing height advantage and backstabs were dumb before Solasta ever came into the equation (the megathread about height/backstab on these forums was started the same week that Solasta entered EA, but a quick skim of the thread actually yields absolutely no mentions of Solasta in there at all), and Tuco's 'toilet chain control system' crusade had nothing to do with Solasta specifically either (it's a lot more 'every other cRPG in existence').

The only thing Solasta really did was amplify the severity of these issues by providing a direct reference point that flies in the face of Larian's PR trying to convince everyone that they thought that the base rules wouldn't make for a compelling combat system, when it appears most are now in agreement that the changes they've made ended up having very bad long-term effects on the overall balance. I suspect half the people that posted in the height/backstab thread have yet to play Solasta and likely never will for a good number of reasons that no one should begrudge them for, nor did a good chunk of people in that recent poll from a couple weeks back that voted against the current combat design. And they came to the same conclusion anyway, for slightly different reasons.

The Solasta discord is generally lukewarm about any kind of comparison, but people generally don't talk about such things there because it turns out the BG3 subreddit has become a far better venue for doing so in recent times, now that people are no longer getting downvoted into censored territory for posting anything remotely considered negative anymore. Also, thanks to that thread, I just remembered that BG3 was originally going to have group initiative. That would have been a pretty big mess. Glad that was reversed before EA began, or else there would have probably been a lot of complaints about entire parties getting nuked before the player got a turn, and stealth cheese would have been outright mandatory.

(BG3 dialogue options were originally going to be done in vague third person speak too. That was also not very popular, and it's a good thing that also got changed before EA launched. Though I wonder how much of the script had to be redone because of that.)

Although, thanks for giving me an excuse to check all this. A quick stroll into the off-topic section of the Solasta discord yielded information about someone trying to remake all of BG2 within the engine of Neverwinter Nights. As I haven't played either game but have heard how NWN's engine is apparently legendary among programmers in general, I am curious to see how this turns out. (And for the curious, no one seems to be talking about BG3 there either, but there's a fair amount of people from a month ago that seem to be bewildered about the new Dark Alliance, ha.)
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
Here, let me explain this simply since you seem to either not understand, or want to intentional misconstrue what I wrote. They are not saying they want BG3 on those forums to be strict D&D, they are saying they are glad 2 d&d BASED (I am assuming you know the difference between BASED and Replicate) games are coming out. Two different type of games to play. They are not saying they want a RAW D&D simulator just like Solasta. Hopefully that explains it to you since you want to keep trying to push this misrepresentation of what I was saying. The majority of the commenters are on that forum has the basic complaints about UI, group linking etc. Like I mentioned above, but DO NOT want a copy of Solasta mechanics.

Not to mention, I love the irony of the fact, that on the Solasta forums, they are looking forwards to BG3 (with some modifications to UI, group chain and inventory), and posters here are trying to USE Solasta as a hammer to beat BG3 with. When someone tries to post negative over analyzation of BG3, Solasta posters are defending it).
I'll entertain this for a bit.

"The irony of this is that if you go to the Solasta forums, where people try the reverse and try to start hate on BG3... the majority want and enjoy both games."
- People want both games and find ways to enjoy them, cool.

"The overall opinion is the more D&D the better, and they look forward to the differences (where here, they want a replica)."
- You didn't provide any evidence, I can't infer anything between "look forward to the differences" versus "where here, they want a replica". Without links I have to take the last two statements as a wash.

"Of course people have justifiable discussions about little things like inventory management, the ugly group chain, the UI but none of this Larian bashing or these "mechanic sux" attitude."
- Again without links or evidence it sounds like people agree on some things and disagree on others. I have to take it as a wash if you want me to buy into your anecdote. Especially since it doesn't make sense for anyone to criticize Larian on another developer's forum. Would you expect to see forum members bash EA here? Consistently?

"It is actually a pretty interesting comparison between communities."
- It's also interesting and worth discussing comparisons between Baldur's Gate 3 and Solasta (as videogames). To come full circle, it's okay to criticize Baldur's Gate 3 in early access if we get a better game on release.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
user interface:
Solasta is way better than BG3.
As I have written even before playing Solasta, BG3 needs a spell menu. The hotbar in BG3 is a total mess. Its even worse when a new icon comes up "cast spell x again", probably some hotbar pages later.
A menu for class abilities would also be great.
In Solasta I never had a problem to find the spell or ability I was looking for. (except help actions, see later)
Sorting and searching several pages of hotbars in BG3 is annoying.
Well, hotbar in BG3 is a mess only if you let it become a mess ...
There is strill space for improvements, that is true ... but it have its uses, and i honestly hope that Larian keeps it.

As you said, Solasta is ugly ...
And speaking for myself, their interface is best example of that sentence. :-/

Originally Posted by Madscientist
game mechanics:
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.
I was kinda sad then i find out that nobody replyed on this topic about flying. :-/

But i would like to see spiderwalk. :3

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- The way reaction are managed in Solasta is good. A window popping up "do you want to use this reaction now?" does not disturb the game flow. It does not happen every round and you can ask about several reactions at once.
This is the only thing i actualy like about Solasta ...
You have at least something to do, while enemies have their turns.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Solasta shows you at character creation and at every level up what your character can learn at later levels, what subclasses you can select and what these subclasses will give you.
In BG3 its much harder to plan your character if you do not look in the wiki.
I believe this was allready mentioned on this forum ...
Probably as suggestion. It would be nice tho.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.
Serious question:
What bennefit woult then staying in stealth on start of the combat have?

I mean, yes unlimmited movement is OP as f*** ... especialy since you still can use all your actions and bonus actions, if you play them in corect order ...
But when your sneaking character would simply be forced into Turn-based timezone ... what exactly would you get from that sneaking, or to put it in different words, what reason would be there so sneak at all? O_o

I would be all in for all characters rolling initiative, when combat starts ... its pretty anoying when another character joins the fight and must skip whole round since he rolled good innitiative, but sadly the others was allready on their turn. :-/
But characters that was "not yet discovered" should at least be able to move faster (aka. more far) to the position. Otherwise i simply dont see any reason for using stealth in the first place. :-/

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.
Im confused here ...
Are you complaining about using portals ... or about the fact that BG3 uses instant fast travel to nearest portal, so you can use it? O_o

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Resting: It is OK if you can rest at dedicated rest points (or you build them up as in Kingmaker) or if you have to walk back to your camp. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to camp, sleep and teleport right back to the position you have been before. It feels also wrong in BG3 that the camp is NOT a place anywhere on the normal map. I hope you will use a different camp when you have more acts and visit other regions.
Im still kinda sure that isue about the same camp could be easily resolved by using different "skins" for the very same camp ...
Outside > use beach texture ...
Underdark > use cave texture ... etc.
Its certainly lazy solution, but effective.

And i still believe that ruin we have on our camp should contain that teleportation rune ...
At least to explain how are we getting back every evening, without loosing half day for "walking back". :-/
Then all you need is adding some consumable that will allow you to teleport ... and voila!

All problems with camp are gone. O_o
Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Serious question:
What bennefit woult then staying in stealth on start of the combat have?

I mean, yes unlimmited movement is OP as f*** ... especialy since you still can use all your actions and bonus actions, if you play them in corect order ...
But when your sneaking character would simply be forced into Turn-based timezone ... what exactly would you get from that sneaking, or to put it in different words, what reason would be there so sneak at all? O_o

I would be all in for all characters rolling initiative, when combat starts ... its pretty anoying when another character joins the fight and must skip whole round since he rolled good innitiative, but sadly the others was allready on their turn. :-/
But characters that was "not yet discovered" should at least be able to move faster (aka. more far) to the position. Otherwise i simply dont see any reason for using stealth in the first place. :-/

Advantage smile

That's how it works in Solasta : if your party is hidden (or some members) and a combat start because one of them is spotted, the other characters are in combats but they stay hidden.
The ennemy don't see them and don't attack them but you have an advantage on their attack roll.

The ennemy can see you if he's moving close to you (usually when he tries to reach the spotted characters)
When you attack someone with a hidden character a skill check is made to determine if you're spotted or not. If you are, every ennemies see you but if you're not, you keep your advantage for the next turn... until the next skill check or until an ennemy move close to you.

It works pretty well IMO and it's interresting because it's really rewardfull.
Of course the appeal of "advantage" through hide (or anything else) is really low in BG3 because of backstab and highground.
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
They are. Shaman (orc I guess) used lightning bolt close to every time I see them. And they walked to target more characters, avoiding their friends at the same time.

And ennemies often move in/out your firewall and your spirit guardian, which means that the AI is trying to avoid damages... but the creatures just does not have any tools to range attack.
Would it be a better AI if they were just staying away while you're killing them ? The AI is not the problem. Creatures lack of tools / ranged attack may be one...

What's doing the AI in BG3 when the creatures cannot attack you for any reason ? Slowly dying without moving. Is that because the AI is not smart enough ?
As an exemple, just think about the owlbear when you're going "higher"

On the other hand if every creatures had tools and were smart enough to avoid such spells... These spells would be useless whatever we're talking about Solasta or BG3.

Just like in BG3, the ennemies use the verticality at their advantage with more variation in Solasta, they push you but also prone you, they play with the light, try to kill your characters, try to engage your ranged, use bane, slow and other debuff, use thunderwave a lot (which is less spectacular and OP than in BG3), and so on,...


Well, again, BG3 isn't a finished game and some tweaking is still needed but I already demonstrated that the AI is much more sophisticated in Bg3 than it is in Solasta. The enemies for the most part also have a lot more tools to work with. But I think you nailed the point; the creatures in Solasta do not have enough tools to work with, being constrained is a blade that cuts both ways and it results in fights that are badly devised and not well-balanced, and too easy. So bad AI and no tools make for a game that is ridiculously easy.

You could say that in a way - Solasta is a perfect demonstration why Larian has worked so hard to try to balance encounters by doing homebrew mechanics for creatures. Making sure that the mobs have as many tools as possible to work with so they don't end up - for example - being a dumb flying creatures that's only move is to move in and out of range before/after it attacks - setting itself up for multiple opportunity attacks and allowing it to get hit with persistent aoe spells like Spirit Guardian.

It gets to the heart of the problem with video games - no human DM to allow for creative behavior/schemes/attacks. So you try to come up with other ways to express that behavior.

I hope Larian fixes all the exploits, 100% I do. I want BG3 to be even more challenging than it is and I don't want anyone to have an easy out unless they choose "story mode". Solasta may get the technical stuff right, but Larian does a much better job of making the encounters feel up to the appropriate challenge level of D&D.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
You could say that in a way - Solasta is a perfect demonstration why Larian has worked so hard to try to balance encounters by doing homebrew mechanics for creatures. Making sure that the mobs have as many tools as possible to work with so they don't end up - for example - being a dumb flying creatures that's only move is to move in and out of range before/after it attacks - setting itself up for multiple opportunity attacks and allowing it to get hit with persistent aoe spells like Spirit Guardian.

It gets to the heart of the problem with video games - no human DM to allow for creative behavior/schemes/attacks. So you try to come up with other ways to express that behavior.

I hope Larian fixes all the exploits, 100% I do. I want BG3 to be even more challenging than it is and I don't want anyone to have an easy out unless they choose "story mode". Solasta may get the technical stuff right, but Larian does a much better job of making the encounters feel up to the appropriate challenge level of D&D.

I am actually in slight agreement here. BG3 can still be hard without needing to pigeonhole everyone into believing they need to cheese back harder, just because enemies have access to the same overpowered mechanics too and that encounters may be designed around the cheese existing. DOS2 already proved this somewhat, with that game's problems solely revolving around the armor system and the stat bloat it encouraged the further you got into the game, rather than anything mechanical. Sure, DOS2 had problems with late game bosses playing one-shot rocket tag with your party, but it's a very different problem and the distinction is quite important there. BG3 can absolutely do away with stealth, backstab and high ground shenanigans, and the main things that would result in is some high-ground heavy ranged fights being a lot less ridiculous.

And again, backstab advantage would have no reason to exist if shove gets the second half of its function implemented, the option to knock things prone so that all melee attacks against them get advantage until the target's turn. Granted, enemies can probably shove YOU prone too. But it'd be a lot more interesting than out of bounds instant kill shoves, because I gotta say, that Druegar fight where the boss shoved Gale off the ledge (and his decaying corpse subsequently killing Scratch back at camp) as the final fuck you towards the very end of a fight that took me about half an hour was really not what I'd consider legitimately hard or compelling. It left me upset enough the first time I played through that I just went into total no mercy mode after reloading and straight up stealthed and shoved off as much of the camp as I could, and had my Bard/Gale/Wyll spam Shatter nukes on all the remaining survivors, ignoring all the precious potential for dialogue from the boss and loot from everything I threw off. Pulling that off wasn't hard, and this wasn't some crazy unique mindblowing tactic or anything, it was just cheap. Doesn't compare to, say, using teleport to pick up those water barrels in the Blackpits and drop it at the top of the platform so that it becomes much harder for those void slimes to necrofire everyone's asses up there.

It is questionable that one of the most efficient ways to play the game is to avoid dialogue entirely and stealth/alpha strike everything, which is the antithesis of Larian putting so much effort into the writing and cinematics to begin with. Or send one party member to act as bait while the rest of the party sets up. Makes me feel extremely murderhobo-y, and I have enough problems with that in my tabletop group as of late. But really, if the game wants to play with cheap instant kill stuff in some fights instead of actually being legit hard, then it should be expected that some players may decide to play in a way that doesn't respect the narrative half of the game either. The part of the game that Larian is clearly putting the most effort into, and the part that no other cRPG can really touch in the visuals department.

That said, your example about flying enemies only possessing melee attacks is a deliberate thing. They're there to provide value to ready actions and force melee characters to play defensively and predict. BG3's current systems generally promote heavy offense, because there's really no playing defensively to speak of, with the high frequency of AoE thrown items and field damage with no saving throws to avoid them, height advantage existing, and the kind of action economy that's present as is.

Even though I advocate for the addition of ready actions and dodge actions, it is also important to question how much the latter would actually matter in the context of how BG3's AI behaves. Maybe not as much as it does in Solasta, but more options are always better than less in the long term. At the very least, it means your melee can hold their ground to punish someone trying to climb up to reach your ranged on high ground, instead of hopping off to chase them and potentially expose themselves to retaliation from other enemies at the bottom, and the dodge action will at least allow any character that otherwise has no viable tactics to defend themselves by imposing disadvantage on everything making attack rolls against them until an opportunity presents itself.

I think smarter enemies could potentially ready action and dodge action against YOU as well within BG3. Wouldn't that be neat? I don't think Solasta's enemy AI actually does this... Plus we all know we're going to get fireball'd out the ass after Act 1 of BG3 since this is a Larian game we're talking about, so having proper reactions so we can actually control our counterspells is going to be pretty damn critical. Because it'd be such a shame to blow that counterspell on a cantrip only to end up letting that fireball go through, one that may force you to reload the game. Much bigger waste of time than any prompts asking you if you want to use a reaction.
WoW, this thread has turned out to be surprizingly civilized and productive.

some comments to things already said:
- Yes, the problem of both game is dumb enemy AI. Sometimes it is very easy for players to exploit dumb enemies.
While Larian tries to make enemies clever and sometimes it even works, it feels just wrong when enemies do nothing when you shoot from stealth or if they do not realize when you put lots of barrels around them.
Enemies should make a perception check when you shoot at them and they should also make a perception check when you place items around them. They have a vision cone, but they would look around in all directions if objects suddenly pop up around them or if someone shoots at them.
For BG3, if an enemy is attacked by someone they cannot see or reach, they should hide behind a massive object and ready an attack in case the player comes around the corner (which would require a proper ready action)
For Solasta, I agree that the stealth system is good, but for example enemies do not react if you damage them by shooting at stuff hanging from the ceiling.

And yes, the advantage of starting combat from stealth is having advantage because high ground or attacking from behind should not give advantage.
In Solasta its no problem to start combat when all chars are in stealth and in attack range of ranged or even melee attacks. This is more than enough advantage. No need to sneak freely between enemies or move to the battle area from miles away while everybody else is frozen in time.

more things:
- Both games try to use light properly. The result is the same: Use only chars with darkvision, elves rule, dwarves are OK and there is little reason to use humans or halflings. Wood elves are the best unless you really need other stats or profiencies. Sure, there are items or abilities that give darkvision, but why use an item or select an ability if you can have it automatically and use another item or ability. In both games the only problem with darkness is, when enemies are in range of your ranged attacks but outside your darkvision range. Since both games feel the same ragarding light, I think the system is OK. Its nice that you can use light effectively against vampires in Solasta. So far there were no vampires in BG3 except a very special one.

- Some players complained that the crown in BG3 that sets your int to 18 is OP. No, it is not. Solasta had such items for every stat and I never used them. Players will max out the primary stat of their class and other stats just give a bonus to some skills. But players will give profiencies to characters that have maxed out this stat, so the bonus for the group is very small unless you want to solo the game.
The crown can be useful if you want to play without a mage in your party (other classes do not really need int), but it only gives a bonus to knowledge skills.

I said it many times before and playing Solasta made the feeling even stronger: BG3 is a great game and it could become the best RPG in history. But Larians changes to the rules ruins some of the experiance.
Dear Larian people, please get action/bonus action/reaction and (dis)advantage right and the game will become much better.
The rest of the game is already very good, though there is still some room for improvement.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
WoW, this thread has turned out to be surprizingly civilized and productive.

some comments to things already said:
- Yes, the problem of both game is dumb enemy AI. Sometimes it is very easy for players to exploit dumb enemies.
While Larian tries to make enemies clever and sometimes it even works, it feels just wrong when enemies do nothing when you shoot from stealth or if they do not realize when you put lots of barrels around them.


See I have been thinking as to how this should be handled and I think when you put a barrel next to a mob then it should go and just pick it up. "This shouldn't be here, I'll put it away later" and Bloop, its gone into their inventory.

Certain mobs can have the tag "Fastidious" - and those mobs are neat freaks.

So if you break a barrel full of oil or firewine, then they start immediately cleaning it up.

The alternative is they just attack and that is way more problematic.

Now Larian ultimately has an Ace up its sleeve on the AI issue because eventually we will be getting DM Mode, where a human player can take over for the enemy characters and get as brutally creative as any human can be. Hopefully I can be one of those DM's for people who crave a seriously nasty no-holds-barred fight to the death.

And yeah, I am glad we can finally have a civilized conversation about other games - like Solasta - without the acrimony. I think we had an issue here for a long time where certain people would show up to promote Solasta by insulting Larian. Not just to point out some things Solasta did right - but to accuse Larian of being lazy, or incompetent, or "not caring". It was really ugly behavior AND behavior the devs over at Solasta would not thank them for.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
I find these comparisons odd personally because BG3 is the larger more ambitious game by a few orders of magnitude. Its strange to compare it to a game like Solasta which takes no risks and constrains your actions to the point of having no agency.
I agree, but most comparisons here I have seen are focused around combat mechanic, and translation of DnD systems into computer setting - and as both game use DnD 5e it is very much 1:1 comparison. It doesn't necessarily make Solasta a better game then BG3, but it's is as perfect comparison as one can get when it comes to combat.


Originally Posted by Blackheifer
BG3 is also building off an engine that needs extensive modification still to make it work for 5E rules.
That's hilarious. Tactical Adventures had to build on Unity to fit their needs as well. Larian isn't simply reusing Divinity engine - I remember it being mentioned in one interviews it is heavily modified. If Larian wanted to make Solasta-like systems they easily could. They a massive team, with big budget and their own engine, and seemingly unending budget. What they do/don't do is creative choice and design decision.


Originally Posted by Blackheifer
The most time-intensive fight was the magic spitting forest tree spiders who stay in their trees and never chase you but will shoot at you, until they can't then they just stay where they are while you line of sight them one-by-one. I guess those are tactics if you like.
Or you can knock them down, use mentioned fly or spider walk. Verticality in Solasta is definitely clunky (I dislike not being able to precisely control my flying character unless there is platform he can stand on or enemy to attack) but it's cool. Not something Larian needs to adapt, but a cool system nonetheless.


Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Solasta does have the better UI but I never expected that the current UI wouldn't be redesigned one way or another.
I wish I shared your confidence. Larian already shipped two games with it's awful chaining-characters system and hotbar, and didn't feel the need to add functionality to it. Will it change for BG3? I hope so, as issues that were annoying in both D:OS games will be unbearable in a DnD game.

Originally Posted by Blackheifer
it is my hope that the Solasta team made enough that we one day see a Solasta 2 with Multiplayer and an engine that allows a lot more freedom.
I actually think Solasta stroke gold with the concept - I would like a sequel with better writing, better character reactivity, more classes, subclasses and enemies, perhaps more choices and reactivity in the story, but linear balanced, custom voiced charactirized party creation tactical RPG is a wonderful nieche unoccupied by competition. I think it would be shame if they would get overambitious.
Search the forums for BG3 and read multiple forums. It is common thing going on there rather than trying to cherry pick one forum thread.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
They are. Shaman (orc I guess) used lightning bolt close to every time I see them. And they walked to target more characters, avoiding their friends at the same time.

And ennemies often move in/out your firewall and your spirit guardian, which means that the AI is trying to avoid damages... but the creatures just does not have any tools to range attack.
Would it be a better AI if they were just staying away while you're killing them ? The AI is not the problem. Creatures lack of tools / ranged attack may be one...

What's doing the AI in BG3 when the creatures cannot attack you for any reason ? Slowly dying without moving. Is that because the AI is not smart enough ?
As an exemple, just think about the owlbear when you're going "higher"

On the other hand if every creatures had tools and were smart enough to avoid such spells... These spells would be useless whatever we're talking about Solasta or BG3.

Just like in BG3, the ennemies use the verticality at their advantage with more variation in Solasta, they push you but also prone you, they play with the light, try to kill your characters, try to engage your ranged, use bane, slow and other debuff, use thunderwave a lot (which is less spectacular and OP than in BG3), and so on,...


Well, again, BG3 isn't a finished game and some tweaking is still needed but I already demonstrated that the AI is much more sophisticated in Bg3 than it is in Solasta. The enemies for the most part also have a lot more tools to work with. But I think you nailed the point; the creatures in Solasta do not have enough tools to work with, being constrained is a blade that cuts both ways and it results in fights that are badly devised and not well-balanced, and too easy. So bad AI and no tools make for a game that is ridiculously easy.

You could say that in a way - Solasta is a perfect demonstration why Larian has worked so hard to try to balance encounters by doing homebrew mechanics for creatures. Making sure that the mobs have as many tools as possible to work with so they don't end up - for example - being a dumb flying creatures that's only move is to move in and out of range before/after it attacks - setting itself up for multiple opportunity attacks and allowing it to get hit with persistent aoe spells like Spirit Guardian.

It gets to the heart of the problem with video games - no human DM to allow for creative behavior/schemes/attacks. So you try to come up with other ways to express that behavior.

I hope Larian fixes all the exploits, 100% I do. I want BG3 to be even more challenging than it is and I don't want anyone to have an easy out unless they choose "story mode". Solasta may get the technical stuff right, but Larian does a much better job of making the encounters feel up to the appropriate challenge level of D&D.

I respectfully disagree that the AI is smarter in BG3 than in Solasta but I agree that ennemies in BG3 have more tools... (And obviously that BG3 is in EA while Solasta is 1.0 smile )
Is having more tool always better ? I really don't think so.

You talked about guardian spirit and fire wall and I cannot disagree : it is overkill in Solasta.
But how to make those spells enjoyable /usefull if every creatures has a solution to range attack for the entire combats, a solution to insta break your concentration (surfaces flasks) and/or if they were "smart enough" not to come in the AoE ?

Just as you I'm 100% fine with a harder game than Solasta but the authentic mode is already challenging for new players. Challenging... but fair.
Just look at their discord or some forums talking about the game, a lot of new players are asking for advices.

Also, did you roll your abilities or played with point buy ? I tried both and this really increased the difficulty.
This is something we cannot try in BG3 but I guess it will also decrease the difficulty.

The problem with BG3's additional tools is that they're way too powerfull on both side.

- The game is extremely easy if you use them and it would be terrible if the AI was able to use them as much/as smart as us (diping, shove, backstab, avoid 100% of the AOO, and so on)

On the other hand, the tools they added to creatures and the combat design supposed to balance our "homebrewed tools" are also completely broken.

- A lot of creatures can litterally kill one or more of your characters during their first turn, concentration is broken way too easily, the harpy fight is a pain because they can fly, the combat outside the goblins camp is a pain because there are way too many ennemies, you miss more often because they increased some AC, they increased the goblins HP so you have 0 chance to OS one of them, lots of creatures makes better ST than they should because their dexterity has been increased, and so on...

The result is that combats are often unfair and frustrating (please, try to set your mind in the head of a new player that hasn't played hundreds of hours and/or that doesn't know DnD) and that your sucess rely on several custom and OP mechanics. The most challenging combats are limited to "smart moves to nuke your opponent before being nuked". This makes combats way less deep than they should and reduce A LOT our creativity and the usefullness of many tools that are included in DnD (and in BG3).

Solasta may be too easy but Solasta has fair combats and every spells and choices are valuable even if some are better than others depending the situation.
You can end the game without spirit guardian and fire wall even in scavenger or cataclysm mode because other level 3 and 4 spells are also powerfull. Will we be able to end BG3 at higher difficulty without using any "op larianisms" ? (from mechanics to consumables and so on...) I really doubt.

If Larian's will was to create more challenging combats (I don't think so, really), their answer was completely wrong according to me.
If their will was to add new custom mechanics and/or tools, I'm 100% fine with it but the answer was also wrong and created many huge issues everywhere that doesn't exist neither in DnD, neither in Solasta.
Just for you Dragonsnooz;

https://forums.solasta-game.com/forum/played-the-demo-better-than-bg3
https://forums.solasta-game.com/forum/why-do-i-like-solasta-so-much-more-than-bg3
https://forums.solasta-game.com/search?query=bg3
https://forums.solasta-game.com/forum/baldurs-gate-3
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
The problem with BG3's antinational tools is that they're way too powerfull on both side.

- The game is extremely easy if you use them and it would be terrible if the AI was able to use them as much/as smart as us (diping, shove, backstab, avoid 100% of the AOO, and so on)

On the other hand, the tools they added to creatures and the combat design supposed to balance our "homebrewed tools" are also completely broken.

- A lot of creatures can litterally kill one or more of your characters during their first turn, concentration is broken way too easily, the harpy fight is a pain because they can fly, the combat outside the goblins camp is a pain because there are way too many ennemies, you miss more often because they increased some AC, they increased the goblins HP so you have 0 chance to OS one of them, lots of creatures makes better ST than they should because their dexterity has been increased, and so on...

The result is that combats are often unfair and frustrating (please, try to set your mind in the head of a new player that hasn't played hundreds of hours and/or that doesn't know DnD) and that your sucess rely on several custom and OP mechanics. The most challenging combats are limited to "smart moves to nuke your opponent before being nuked". This makes combats way less deep than they should and reduce A LOT our creativity and the usefullness of many tools that are included in DnD (and in BG3).

Solasta may be too easy but Solasta has fair combats and every spells and choices are valuable even if some are better than others depending the situation.
You can end the game without spirit guardian and fire wall even in scavenger or cataclysm mode because other level 3 and 4 spells are also powerfull. Will we be able to end BG3 at higher difficulty without using any "op larianisms" ? (from mechanics to consumables and so on...) I really doubt.

If Larian's will was to create more challenging combats (I don't think so, really), their answer was completely wrong according to me.
If their will was to add new custom mechanics and/or tools, I'm 100% fine with it but the answer was also wrong and created many huge issues everywhere that doesn't exist neither in DnD, neither in Solasta.


This is a difficult conversation to have because the charge of 'elitist gamer' starts getting thrown around, so I will take this in a different direction. There are some gamers out there that are what some would describe as "high functioning" - and people who are high functioning are constantly trying to stave off boredom by finding greater and greater challenges and things to occupy their minds. If they get bored then they get self-destructive.

In the gaming world there have only ever been a handful of games that are designed to have the challenge level necessary to keep the attention of a high functioning individual. Invariably these games - over time - have been nerfed into oblivion to allow for greater mainstream appeal. The most famous example of this is of course World of Warcraft. In Vanilla it was an uncompromising and incredibly fun experience. You couldn't just run around soloing anything you wanted. The world, especially in pvp, did not make any attempt to be fair. Like all great Art it mirrored the unfairness of life. It rewarded cooperation, and punished those who were anti-social and avoidant. It was easy to learn but hard to master. Only 2-3% of players even managed to kill the final boss before the expansion was released (although this was party because Blizzard released the expansion too early. I think it would have been much higher if they gave people a few more months).

And people complained. "Too hard" they said. "Why should we be forced to get better? Make the game easier." And Blizzard listened, and they proceeded to nerf the game until it because not a game, but a simple interactive experience designed for innocent unremarkables. No accomplishments were celebrated because no accomplishments mattered. And once everyone was standing side by side wearing all the same Epic gear they realized how hollow unearned accolades are and they simply stopped playing. Subscriptions plummeted so much that by the third "expansion" they stopped tracking them out of embarrassment.

But then an interesting thing happened, someone figured out how to run a vanilla server based on the original game. And so private servers started to pop up, and people flocked to them by the thousands. And they would run them for 2 year cycles and then reset them and everyone would start over. People just wanted a taste of that original difficult and uncompromising experience. The game was so complex and well made that people were still figuring out new things to do 10 years after the game was released. It was genius.

The gaming world follows the general model of not creating games, but instead creating "Interactive Experiences". An Interactive Experience does not force the player to learn and adapt to move forward. An Interactive Experience is simply meant to be consumed, you are not expected to learn or grow.

IMHO In a real game if you are not losing then its not challenging enough and you need to move on. When I started BG3 I made all the mistakes and had to learn 5E rules to understand what I was doing wrong (a lot it turns out). I lost a lot of fights and loved every second of it. What is wrong with New players losing fights? Good for them. You're welcome!

I cannot comprehend the mentality of a person who expects to win all the time and is convinced they were created perfect straight from God's hands and no additional knowledge or growth is needed. However, I don't need to. There is a whole world of "games" for people that just want to constantly win with no expectation of improvement. Meanwhile the rest of us don't have a lot of options. Sometimes the hardest difficulty setting isn't enough. Witcher 3 on Blood and Broken Bones? yes please! Honor mode, heck yes!

Larian does a great job of trying to make games that require you to adapt and learn. If people are coming to Solasta/BG3 and having trouble but don't think they need to learn and adapt whose fault is that exactly?

No one is ever forced to use Exploits. I never use them and never will.

One other small point. It is rare to see a game that creates so many optional encounters as Larian does. I want them to create more of these. I want there to be areas of the game that if you start a fight then you are going to die and you have no hope of winning. That's proper D&D right there! So many people that complain about combat difficulty are complaining about optional encounters. Can you imagine a world where you can't win every single battle? Where running is the only thing you can do? or successful dialog, or being sneaky?

So this is my ask, let us have THIS game - I am sure there will be nerfed AI settings/easier combats for new players. Meanwhile I will have my crew on Tactician/Honor mode getting occasionally destroyed by the jerk AI and loving every second of it.
Enough, Pandemonica. If you don't want to participate in their discussion, then stay out of it. It's a perfectly productive and constructive discussion, and it's fine to have comparative discussions about what people enjoy in other games and how that may be worth considering for BG3. What ever other forums and discussions going on out there is irrelevant to this thread.
@Maximuus:
I agree. Solasta is easy but fair. I used the default rules and spend 2h rerolling my 4 chars. (half elf paladin of devotion, dwarf cleric of fire, high elf greenmage, wood elf marksmen ranger)
I did not use spirit guardian because after reading the description I was not sure what it should do: summon a creature, buff yourself, debuff the enemy???
New players may find it challenging but it can be done. Only big problem was vampire lords use AOE dark/blind spell where I found no way to remove the debuff.

BG3 is about: abuse the system and nuke the enemy before they nuke you.

In Solasta my paladin would cast protection from good and evil and then stand between several huge elementals forever.
In BG3 they would bleed fire, making the ground burn and end concentration.
In Solasta the blur spell protects your char from a goblins fire arrow.
In BG3 the arrow misses but it damages the char anyway and break concentration.
Originally Posted by The Composer
Enough, Pandemonica. If you don't want to participate in their discussion, then stay out of it. It's a perfectly productive and constructive discussion, and it's fine to have comparative discussions about what people enjoy in other games and how that may be worth considering for BG3. What ever other forums and discussions going on out there is irrelevant to this thread.

Composer, I am replying to Dragonsnooz who asked for links and proof. So basically Dragonsnooz can say there is no basis for what I was saying, demand proof, then when I link it, it is not relevant?

[quote DragonSnooz]- Again without links or evidence it sounds like people agree on some things and disagree on others. I have to take it as a wash if you want me to buy into your anecdote. Especially since it doesn't make sense for anyone to criticize Larian on another developer's forum. Would you expect to see forum members bash EA here? Consistently?[/quote]

Not to mention, Dragon has not posted one thing in regards to the subject of this thread, just focusing on engaging me. But I am the only one called out?

Whatever, I am out.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
@Maximuus:
I agree. Solasta is easy but fair. I used the default rules and spend 2h rerolling my 4 chars. (half elf paladin of devotion, dwarf cleric of fire, high elf greenmage, wood elf marksmen ranger)
I did not use spirit guardian because after reading the description I was not sure what it should do: summon a creature, buff yourself, debuff the enemy???
New players may find it challenging but it can be done. Only big problem was vampire lords use AOE dark/blind spell where I found no way to remove the debuff.

BG3 is about: abuse the system and nuke the enemy before they nuke you.

In Solasta my paladin would cast protection from good and evil and then stand between several huge elementals forever.
In BG3 they would bleed fire, making the ground burn and end concentration.
In Solasta the blur spell protects your char from a goblins fire arrow.
In BG3 the arrow misses but it damages the char anyway and break concentration.

Yeah, they need to fix concentration. This is a known issue. It makes concentration-related spells not worth using. It would also be good to have access to a Feat like War Caster or whatever that one in Solasta is that lets you ignore the first 10 points of damage in regards to concentration checks. Or if they are going to be so free with the burning ground damage, set a minimum threshold on concentration check damage for everyone - ie. 5 damage or above.

It needs testing.
@Blackheifer
Looks like we have a very different play style.
I play games on the default difficulty and I expect to progress unless I make a big mistake or it is a very hard boss.
For me a role playing game is about experiancing a great story. Lots of reloading is bad for my immersion.
I do not play games to seek the ultimate challenge and I have no problem to lower the difficulty if I hit a hard wall.

Yes, Solasta is easy but I do not complain about it.
It is a good game for new players to learn the 5E rules.

I like the big freedom of BG3. There are several ways to aproach most quests and often you can avoid combat.
But combat often feels unfair because it is labeled as DnD 5E game but it changed so many rules.
Maybe I would feel better if the devs change the game description to: "The game is losely based on DnD 5E with many homebrew changes to please D:OS2 fans."

One more general thing:
I am not a fan of the BG3 shopping system. You have to move items between characters all the time to get good prizes. And you should buff your shopping char before shopping.
In Solasta the prize is dependent on your reputation, but all chars get the same prize.
The BG3 system is frustrating, but you do it because it increases your profit and the game becomes easier when you can afford magic items.

I liked the scavanger system in Solasta to avoid an inflated inventory, but I can understand that this cannot be done in BG3. BG3 is less linear and with this party and story it makes less sense that a group of people cleans up the place after you killed the monsters.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Yeah, they need to fix concentration. This is a known issue. It makes concentration-related spells not worth using. It would also be good to have access to a Feat like War Caster or whatever that one in Solasta is that lets you ignore the first 10 points of damage in regards to concentration checks. Or if they are going to be so free with the burning ground damage, set a minimum threshold on concentration check damage for everyone - ie. 5 damage or above.

It needs testing.
The following suggestion would be slightly more complex to implement, but a feat that allows you to ignore damage from all surface effects in regards to a concentration check would be more balanced imo. "Calloused Feet" or "Surface Hopscotcher" or "Coal-standing Master" or something.

Ignoring up to 5 or 10 damage from ALL sources in regards to concentration feels a bit too powerful for a single feat.

Implementing War Caster that grants you advantage on all concentration checks would also be a great solution (of course, in addition to making it so enemies had to either target you OR the ground when throwing a flask, not both).
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Yeah, they need to fix concentration. This is a known issue. It makes concentration-related spells not worth using. It would also be good to have access to a Feat like War Caster or whatever that one in Solasta is that lets you ignore the first 10 points of damage in regards to concentration checks. Or if they are going to be so free with the burning ground damage, set a minimum threshold on concentration check damage for everyone - ie. 5 damage or above.

It needs testing.
The following suggestion would be slightly more complex to implement, but a feat that allows you to ignore damage from all surface effects in regards to a concentration check would be more balanced imo. "Calloused Feet" or "Surface Hopscotcher" or "Coal-standing Master" or something.

Ignoring up to 5 or 10 damage from ALL sources in regards to concentration feels a bit too powerful for a single feat.

Implementing War Caster that grants you advantage on all concentration checks would also be a great solution (of course, in addition to making it so enemies had to either target you OR the ground when throwing a flask, not both).

Well hopefully the next patch has some sort of adjustment because currently Concentration based spells are much too difficult to waste spell slots on.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
@Blackheifer
Looks like we have a very different play style.
I play games on the default difficulty and I expect to progress unless I make a big mistake or it is a very hard boss.
For me a role playing game is about experiancing a great story. Lots of reloading is bad for my immersion.
I do not play games to seek the ultimate challenge and I have no problem to lower the difficulty if I hit a hard wall.

Yes, Solasta is easy but I do not complain about it.
It is a good game for new players to learn the 5E rules.

I like the big freedom of BG3. There are several ways to aproach most quests and often you can avoid combat.
But combat often feels unfair because it is labeled as DnD 5E game but it changed so many rules.
Maybe I would feel better if the devs change the game description to: "The game is losely based on DnD 5E with many homebrew changes to please D:OS2 fans."

Listen, to be fair, Solasta has its own significant number of homebrew changes that make players OP. The Concentration Feat for Wizards, the Twin Blade Defense Feat, and the Follow Through feat which grants players another full attack (Polarm master is NOT the same as it only allows 1d4). Then there is the Mage subclass that gives you an automatic upgrade on all your spells so they are cast at 1 level higher. That shit is straight OP.

The difference is that this all buffs the Players and not the monsters/villains.

In BG3 they throw around Advantage a lot but it affects everyone. Enemies will run up ladders to get advantage when shooting at you. Enemies will go after players who run away and leave their flank exposed because of advantage. Enemies can disengage as a bonus action just like players.

The truth is most people don't really want an even playing field against the enemy (except me and my friends) - they want an easy win - but that is against the spirit of D&D where you are supposed to make sure you are balancing encounters to make sure they present enough of an obstacle to players that they have to deal with. The irony is not lost that Solasta gets the rules right but fails at the spirit. Where Larian says "to hell with the rules" and goes for the spirit of the game.

I am not talking about the broken stuff or exploits. Throwing people, barrlmancy, tossing potions to heal people, abusing the hide mechanic, healing food all needs to go.
Originally Posted by Icelyn
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.

- Resting: It is OK if you can rest at dedicated rest points (or you build them up as in Kingmaker) or if you have to walk back to your camp. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to camp, sleep and teleport right back to the position you have been before. It feels also wrong in BG3 that the camp is NOT a place anywhere on the normal map. I hope you will use a different camp when you have more acts and visit other regions.
Disagree with these! I like to fast travel where I want and when I want and not have to waste time doubling back. Same with resting. I like to rest when I want and don't like restrictions and having to waste time walking back to camp.

I respecfully disagree on your disagreement wink For me RESTRICTIONS is what separates the great RPGs from the forgettable one. When you start going down the <quality of life> and <quick and easy> route, the whole game becomes that. Classes become pointless. Environments become pointless. No need for day/night cycles. No point for a backpack/inventory. Items become common and boring. There is no more thrill of the battle. No more thought given to gameplay due to certain WEAKNESSES you may have.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by Madscientist
@Blackheifer
Looks like we have a very different play style.
I play games on the default difficulty and I expect to progress unless I make a big mistake or it is a very hard boss.
For me a role playing game is about experiancing a great story. Lots of reloading is bad for my immersion.
I do not play games to seek the ultimate challenge and I have no problem to lower the difficulty if I hit a hard wall.

Yes, Solasta is easy but I do not complain about it.
It is a good game for new players to learn the 5E rules.

I like the big freedom of BG3. There are several ways to aproach most quests and often you can avoid combat.
But combat often feels unfair because it is labeled as DnD 5E game but it changed so many rules.
Maybe I would feel better if the devs change the game description to: "The game is losely based on DnD 5E with many homebrew changes to please D:OS2 fans."

Listen, to be fair, Solasta has its own significant number of homebrew changes that make players OP. The Concentration Feat for Wizards, the Twin Blade Defense Feat, and the Follow Through feat which grants players another full attack (Polarm master is NOT the same as it only allows 1d4). Then there is the Mage subclass that gives you an automatic upgrade on all your spells so they are cast at 1 level higher. That shit is straight OP.

The difference is that this all buffs the Players and not the monsters/villains.

In BG3 they throw around Advantage a lot but it affects everyone. Enemies will run up ladders to get advantage when shooting at you. Enemies will go after players who run away and leave their flank exposed because of advantage. Enemies can disengage as a bonus action just like players.

The truth is most people don't really want an even playing field against the enemy (except me and my friends) - they want an easy win - but that is against the spirit of D&D where you are supposed to make sure you are balancing encounters to make sure they present enough of an obstacle to players that they have to deal with. The irony is not lost that Solasta gets the rules right but fails at the spirit. Where Larian says "to hell with the rules" and goes for the spirit of the game.

I am not talking about the broken stuff or exploits. Throwing people, barrlmancy, tossing potions to heal people, abusing the hide mechanic, healing food all needs to go.


I would like to respectfully and mildly disagree with you you. I don't think it's just a matter of people wanting difficulty, and I don't think it's a matter of Solasta being easy and Baldurs Gate 3 being hard. I haven't played the full version of Solasta yet, I'm in the process of playing another game and want to complete that first, but I played through most of the early access stuff. If they made any significant changes for full release, let me know if they seriously alter the experience. From the first proper mission I was challenged and I died repeatedly, a trend which remained the case throughout the playthrough, with me often barely pulling through several of the tougher encounters, and me feeling really triumphant during the times when I won a fight handily. And I'm not exactly a beginner with crpgs. I've played D:OS (dipped into the sequel but just never clicked with it and so never left fort joy), I've played both Pillars of Eternity games, I've played Dragon Age: Origins, Tyranny, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, have Pathfinder: WotR pre-ordered, I've always been more interested in narrative than combat challenge, but I've got at least a modestly broad range of experience with the genre. And I really loved Solasta and I've found BG3 to be...kinda meh in a lot of ways. Not just combat, but the combat definitely feels weird and off to me, while Solasta's combat was always super satisfying. I probably died more often in BG3, but part of that I put down to being limited to level 4 and not being able to meet the really tough fights at an appropriate level.

I will say that there have been a lot of times when I've been in a position where several of my party have been downed and it's a constant struggle to try and get them back up only for enemies to down them again, which is always frustrating. Some fights, like the Hag (which I'm not even gonna bother touching again until I can get to level 5 at least, haven't won and don't expect to) and the phase spider (I eventually beat that but again don't want to fight it again until higher level) feel frustrating and gimmicky. Other fights like the Githyanki patrol (same situation as the Hag) are just waaaaay too difficult. At the same time, I've seen loads of people on this forum claim they find the game and these fights really easy for one reason or another. I consider myself a pretty average player, while a lot of you here are clearly very skilled to a degree that I'm genuinely not interested in becoming, but remembering that average players who aren't hardcore and aren't especially good, nor especially bad at these games and find them legitimately challenging all the same, is gonna be instructive and useful, I think.
In my eyes, the biggest difference between the home-brewing in Solasta and BG3 is that in Solasta, the home-brewed stuff tends to make the PCs more interesting and unique in their skill sets and in BG3, the home-brewed stuff tends to make all of the characters feel the same because they overshadow or obsolete class features.

If the home-brew in Solasta makes the characters OP (I don't agree that it does), then it can be fixed with any number of balancing techniques. It doesn't really matter if the BG3 home-brew makes the characters over- or under-powered, because it made them boring, which is far worse.
Originally Posted by grysqrl
In my eyes, the biggest difference between the home-brewing in Solasta and BG3 is that in Solasta, the home-brewed stuff tends to make the PCs more interesting and unique in their skill sets and in BG3, the home-brewed stuff tends to make all of the characters feel the same because they overshadow or obsolete class features.

If the home-brew in Solasta makes the characters OP (I don't agree that it does), then it can be fixed with any number of balancing techniques. It doesn't really matter if the BG3 home-brew makes the characters over- or under-powered, because it made them boring, which is far worse.


This feels very subjective in regards to a distinction. Can you provide me with some examples of BG3 Home Brew that makes all the characters feel the same? I think disengage BA is the only one I can think of. What other examples of Homebrew do you mean?

What balancing techniques do you feel would fix the overpowered Solasta characters?
Not the person you responded to
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
This feels very subjective in regards to a distinction. Can you provide me with some examples of BG3 Home Brew that makes all the characters feel the same? I think disengage BA is the only one I can think of. What other examples of Homebrew do you mean?
- All characters can cast any spell a scroll, making every character a wizard
- All characters benefit from high ground/backstab (whereas in other games e.g., DOSII only certain classes benefitted from high ground; and backstab is typically a rogue thing)
- Many enemies have a free disengage and tend to target low-AC characters, which removes the role of frontline tanky characters. This turns every party member into more of a frontline warrior
- The "Help" action restores HP to downed allies; this makes every character a mini-cleric. Furthermore, the abundance of healing food removes the need for a cleric
- Everyone can shove as bonus action, whereas in 5e this is limited to a shield-wielder with a dedicated feat.
- And ofc disengage makes every character more of a rogue/monk
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
What balancing techniques do you feel would fix the overpowered Solasta characters?
Many Solasta characters would be made less OP if feats were tweaked to be less powerful. But this would still allow each character to retain a sense of personality based on their class-feat combo.

As you mentioned, the Concentration feat should just provide advantage. The Follow-up should just provide a single BA attack (In my latest playthrough, that's what the feat said it did).

For the mage class, maybe the ability should instead allow you to reroll 1's (you must use the new result) on evocation spells' damage dice?
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Not the person you responded to

- All characters can cast any spell a scroll, making every character a wizard
- All characters benefit from high ground/backstab (whereas in other games e.g., DOSII only certain classes benefitted from high ground; and backstab is typically a rogue thing)
- Many enemies have a free disengage and tend to target low-AC characters, which removes the role of frontline tanky characters. This turns every party member into more of a frontline warrior
- The "Help" action restores HP to downed allies; this makes every character a mini-cleric. Furthermore, the abundance of healing food removes the need for a cleric
- Everyone can shove as bonus action, whereas in 5e this is limited to a shield-wielder with a dedicated feat.
- And ofc disengage makes every character more of a rogue/monk

Going to add a couple things.

Point 1: Agreed. Probably a coding carryover from DOS2 as well, as every character could use every scroll there as well. I don't expect this to stick.

Point 2: DOS2 did have high ground that benefited everyone (and a low ground penalty), but it was several degrees far less severe than BG3's system. It affected damage bonus and attack range instead of accuracy. The amount of damage for being on high ground starts at +20% and increases by +10% for every point in Huntsman. The low ground penalty was -10% damage and never dropped any further than that. Granted, the Huntsman scaling was one of the reasons why archers became absolutely busted later on, but it's a stat bloat problem rather than a flaw with the actual mechanic. Huge difference from BG3's +5/-5 hit modifiers.

Point 3: Agreed, but to be fair, goblins DO have a bonus action disengage. What shouldn't happen though is Minotaurs, Bulettes, and Harpies being able to jump away without provoking opportunity attacks. Coupling jump and disengage together is such an odd decision from any reasonable standpoint that I think the reasons for it are entirely engine-related rather than something to do with the balance, because we've seen goblins just disengage without jumping already, but we've never seen any enemy in the game use a jump without disengage tied to it. I suspect it's part coding carryover from DOS2, and part 'very bad stuff happened that the engine couldn't handle if someone gets attacked mid-jump'.

Point 4: Agreed. There's another thing to this, the ability to throw healing potions at people to heal them, which means they DO have an advantage over food healing, but it's another thing that invalidates the existence of Healing Word, even if actually using it is a little more clunky.

Point 5: Agreed. If Larian wants to keep bonus action shove that badly, I feel the push function of it should require a minimum strength score to pull it off (14 sounds reasonable), and additionally restricted to martial classes and certain archetypes in the remaining classes (Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, College of Valor Bard as examples). Everyone else only gets access to the knock prone function, unless they get the Shield Master feat and don't fulfill any of the other requirements for the push function (and the Shield Master feat should probably be modified to confer advantage on knock prone attempts too).

Point 6: Agreed.
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Not the person you responded to
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
This feels very subjective in regards to a distinction. Can you provide me with some examples of BG3 Home Brew that makes all the characters feel the same? I think disengage BA is the only one I can think of. What other examples of Homebrew do you mean?
- All characters can cast any spell a scroll, making every character a wizard

This is just something that has not been implemented. No class tags have been assigned to spells. As it is Wizards can learn every spell regardless of class.

Originally Posted by mrfuji3
- All characters benefit from high ground/backstab (whereas in other games e.g., DOSII only certain classes benefitted from high ground; and backstab is typically a rogue thing)

I mean I guess you mean advantage because backstab is still a rogue only ability. No one gets an extra 1d6 from an attack from advantage. Advantage is not something that is a specific class ability but reflects certain conditions.

Originally Posted by mrfuji3
- Many enemies have a free disengage and tend to target low-AC characters, which removes the role of frontline tanky characters. This turns every party member into more of a frontline warrior

Goblins have this as part of their actual ability set in the Monster manual. This is correct. I don't recall anyone else having it. Tanks are not really a thing anymore. This is part of 5e which opened up class versatility.

Originally Posted by mrfuji3
- The "Help" action restores HP to downed allies; this makes every character a mini-cleric. Furthermore, the abundance of healing food removes the need for a cleric

Clerics are not pigeonholed as healers anymore, this is part of 5e class versatility. Furthermore Clerics bring someone back up as a bonus action from range. So I don't think this really holds water. There is stuff in PHB that would technically allow this under certain conditions (Nat 20 using a healing kit).


Originally Posted by mrfuji3
- Everyone can shove as bonus action, whereas in 5e this is limited to a shield-wielder with a dedicated feat.

Ok, fair enough. I think it makes the game funny as hell but if you don't that's your opinion.

Originally Posted by mrfuji3
- And ofc disengage makes every character more of a rogue/monk

Yeah I mentioned this.

Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
What balancing techniques do you feel would fix the overpowered Solasta characters?
Many Solasta characters would be made less OP if feats were tweaked to be less powerful. But this would still allow each character to retain a sense of personality based on their class-feat combo.

As you mentioned, the Concentration feat should just provide advantage. The Follow-up should just provide a single BA attack (In my latest playthrough, that's what the feat said it did).

For the mage class, maybe the ability should instead allow you to reroll 1's (you must use the new result) on evocation spells' damage dice?

Yes but they are not going to do this. Being fair to both games the problem in my eyes is not the homebrew stuff, its creating a challenge that reflects the increased power level. I think - so far - BG3 does a better job of encounter building to balance against the homebrew. Solasta has a long way to go to both 1) increase the quality of the AI and 2) give the other side appropriate tools to provide a solid fight.

I honetsly think that Solasta doesn't have the energy and resources to spend on encounter balancing where I think Larian obsesses over it.


In a fight in BG3 with Goblins I feel like I am fighting Goblins. They are shifty little shits that fight dirty. I don't always know what they will do. Which is great. They have surprised me with some nasty behavior. The same goes for bugbears, red caps, humans, clerics, and wizards. I have observed separate AI scripts for different enemies, which is awesome!

In Solasta I know what most enemies are going to do 90% of the time. Some variations for spellcasters and flying enemies but even then they follow a pretty predictable pattern.

And listen, I went into Solasta expecting a grand challenge - I put the time and energy into learning the rules and being super meticulous about my loadout, character build, equipment, crafting and spell prep and I ended up never running into an encounter where it was ever really tested. So for me that was a letdown. Just one encounter where I barely scraped by would have been nice.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
The problem with BG3's antinational tools is that they're way too powerfull on both side.

- The game is extremely easy if you use them and it would be terrible if the AI was able to use them as much/as smart as us (diping, shove, backstab, avoid 100% of the AOO, and so on)

On the other hand, the tools they added to creatures and the combat design supposed to balance our "homebrewed tools" are also completely broken.

- A lot of creatures can litterally kill one or more of your characters during their first turn, concentration is broken way too easily, the harpy fight is a pain because they can fly, the combat outside the goblins camp is a pain because there are way too many ennemies, you miss more often because they increased some AC, they increased the goblins HP so you have 0 chance to OS one of them, lots of creatures makes better ST than they should because their dexterity has been increased, and so on...

The result is that combats are often unfair and frustrating (please, try to set your mind in the head of a new player that hasn't played hundreds of hours and/or that doesn't know DnD) and that your sucess rely on several custom and OP mechanics. The most challenging combats are limited to "smart moves to nuke your opponent before being nuked". This makes combats way less deep than they should and reduce A LOT our creativity and the usefullness of many tools that are included in DnD (and in BG3).

Solasta may be too easy but Solasta has fair combats and every spells and choices are valuable even if some are better than others depending the situation.
You can end the game without spirit guardian and fire wall even in scavenger or cataclysm mode because other level 3 and 4 spells are also powerfull. Will we be able to end BG3 at higher difficulty without using any "op larianisms" ? (from mechanics to consumables and so on...) I really doubt.

If Larian's will was to create more challenging combats (I don't think so, really), their answer was completely wrong according to me.
If their will was to add new custom mechanics and/or tools, I'm 100% fine with it but the answer was also wrong and created many huge issues everywhere that doesn't exist neither in DnD, neither in Solasta.


This is a difficult conversation to have because the charge of 'elitist gamer' starts getting thrown around, so I will take this in a different direction. There are some gamers out there that are what some would describe as "high functioning" - and people who are high functioning are constantly trying to stave off boredom by finding greater and greater challenges and things to occupy their minds. If they get bored then they get self-destructive.

In the gaming world there have only ever been a handful of games that are designed to have the challenge level necessary to keep the attention of a high functioning individual. Invariably these games - over time - have been nerfed into oblivion to allow for greater mainstream appeal. The most famous example of this is of course World of Warcraft. In Vanilla it was an uncompromising and incredibly fun experience. You couldn't just run around soloing anything you wanted. The world, especially in pvp, did not make any attempt to be fair. Like all great Art it mirrored the unfairness of life. It rewarded cooperation, and punished those who were anti-social and avoidant. It was easy to learn but hard to master. Only 2-3% of players even managed to kill the final boss before the expansion was released (although this was party because Blizzard released the expansion too early. I think it would have been much higher if they gave people a few more months).

And people complained. "Too hard" they said. "Why should we be forced to get better? Make the game easier." And Blizzard listened, and they proceeded to nerf the game until it because not a game, but a simple interactive experience designed for innocent unremarkables. No accomplishments were celebrated because no accomplishments mattered. And once everyone was standing side by side wearing all the same Epic gear they realized how hollow unearned accolades are and they simply stopped playing. Subscriptions plummeted so much that by the third "expansion" they stopped tracking them out of embarrassment.

But then an interesting thing happened, someone figured out how to run a vanilla server based on the original game. And so private servers started to pop up, and people flocked to them by the thousands. And they would run them for 2 year cycles and then reset them and everyone would start over. People just wanted a taste of that original difficult and uncompromising experience. The game was so complex and well made that people were still figuring out new things to do 10 years after the game was released. It was genius.

The gaming world follows the general model of not creating games, but instead creating "Interactive Experiences". An Interactive Experience does not force the player to learn and adapt to move forward. An Interactive Experience is simply meant to be consumed, you are not expected to learn or grow.

IMHO In a real game if you are not losing then its not challenging enough and you need to move on. When I started BG3 I made all the mistakes and had to learn 5E rules to understand what I was doing wrong (a lot it turns out). I lost a lot of fights and loved every second of it. What is wrong with New players losing fights? Good for them. You're welcome!

I cannot comprehend the mentality of a person who expects to win all the time and is convinced they were created perfect straight from God's hands and no additional knowledge or growth is needed. However, I don't need to. There is a whole world of "games" for people that just want to constantly win with no expectation of improvement. Meanwhile the rest of us don't have a lot of options. Sometimes the hardest difficulty setting isn't enough. Witcher 3 on Blood and Broken Bones? yes please! Honor mode, heck yes!

Larian does a great job of trying to make games that require you to adapt and learn. If people are coming to Solasta/BG3 and having trouble but don't think they need to learn and adapt whose fault is that exactly?

No one is ever forced to use Exploits. I never use them and never will.

One other small point. It is rare to see a game that creates so many optional encounters as Larian does. I want them to create more of these. I want there to be areas of the game that if you start a fight then you are going to die and you have no hope of winning. That's proper D&D right there! So many people that complain about combat difficulty are complaining about optional encounters. Can you imagine a world where you can't win every single battle? Where running is the only thing you can do? or successful dialog, or being sneaky?

So this is my ask, let us have THIS game - I am sure there will be nerfed AI settings/easier combats for new players. Meanwhile I will have my crew on Tactician/Honor mode getting occasionally destroyed by the jerk AI and loving every second of it.

I can't talk for anyone but me but don't get me wrong if that's what you understood. I'm not frustrated at all when I'm dying. I LOVE dying because it means that my choices were not so good. That I can find a better strategy than what I tried.

I'm definitely not the most "hardcore" gamer, the best at creating builds and the best to exploit games mechanics but I'm far from being a "casual" gamer (I'm using those words to explain my feeling, not to hurt anyone).
Dying is a challenge to me and retrying the same combats 3, 4, 5 times or more is never a problem to me whatever my "skills". I'm never starting any game in the "normal" difficulty mode because I like being challenged.
I can also retry some combats if a character is dead or if things aren't going how I wants. To give a BG3 exemple I did the combats at the mill more than once because I didn't understood that killing ALL the goblins wouldn't be possible if I did not prevent damages on "the named one" (don't remember his name).

My challenge is to find ways to improve my strategy and make better personnal choices. When a game keep throwing at my head that what I choose is NOT an optimal strategy, I don't feel rewarded at all. And that's exactly what BG3 is doing : it forces me to play a suboptimal gameplay if I want a bit of challenge and variety OR to embrace the optimal mechanics that will make the game way too easy or repetitive.

That is completely unfair and uninterresting to me.
I want to feel that my choices are optimal even if yours may be even more. I want my creativity to be rewarded.

Here's another disclaimer but I personnaly never complained about what I call "choices for fun" : barrelmancy, stealing merchants, throwing a chest to OS anyone in DoS, being able to put tons of things in their backpack, being able to make the bulette fights the minotaurs, being able to rez any creatures with guth (guth ? the mushroom... not sure of his name), being able to take the 2D12 weapons of minotaurs... All these choices and many others require efforts from the players and when they achieve it, they are rewarded. Being able to blow the entire map is not a reward I'm interrested in but who am I to say that the others shouldn't be able to have this reward ?

When you're a player that wants to find the best tactics he can think of depending the situation and depending your character/party build... the game is not satisfying at all after a few hours because the best tactics are obviously always the same.

Of course you can choose not to use the buttons but it has a huge impact on the experience and the difficulty. The only reward doing this is something like "cool, I beat the game without using the OP buttons". You may like this reward but I don't think that it's something most players are looking for.

The game is definitely balanced arround highground and backstab, free disengage and so on...
Higher difficulty levels will be "nuke even faster or being nuked even faster", which means using dipping, eating the best healing items, shoving creatures as a bonus action, using the broken consummables, eventually using surfaces to break our ennemie's concentration and deal damages to creatures that aren't smart enough to jump, and so on...

A balanced game doesn't prevent you to find "more" optimal builds and tactics and it doesn't prevent the game to offer you a challenge that suits you.
An unbalanced games doesn't make me feel rewarded when I click a suboptimal button for the sake of not cliking the optimal button that is right next to the other.

DnD is balanced to offer so many choices and creativity. Rewarding players whatever their choices is probably what every DM is doing and I think that this is what most games succeed at.
That is my feeling when I played Solasta and any other tactical turn based games.

Baldur's Gate 3 only rewards me if I use the mechanics created by Larian (see the disclaimer). If I don't it punishes me, making the game harder.
Games shouldn't ever have so obvious and so easy better tactics. It's not a matter of difficulty at all. It's only a matter of balance.

EDIT : Please, like other did on other threads don't come with obvious exploits. No one has ever used cloudkill and the fog of war exploit in BG2 because it's an interresting and optimal strategy. Players used them because they cannot killed the dragons without it smile This is the old equivalent of barrelmancy, not to highground advantages and any other unbalanced mechanics (>< choices for fun)

EDIT 2 : you didn't answer but what were the abilities of your characters in Solasta when you started the game ? Did you roll or used point buy ?
Feats are obviously more OP when you don't have to increase your abilities at level 4 and 8 smile
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
My challenge is to find ways to improve my strategy and make better personnal choices. When a game keep throwing at my head that what I choose is NOT an optimal strategy, I don't feel rewarded at all. And that's exactly what BG3 is doing : it forces me to play a suboptimal gameplay if I want a bit of challenge OR embrace the optimal mechanics that will make the game way too easy or repetitive.

That is completely unfair and uninterresting to me.
I want to feel that MY choices are optimal even if yours may be even more. I want MY creativity to be rewarded.

Or in shorter words, the most overpowered things in BG3 in its current state don't actually have anything to do with your character builds (outside of maybe Great Weapon Master, and even then it's mostly the minotaur axes that enables that to be way stronger than usual). Most of the cheese consist of tools available to every single character from level 1. It's why some have the opinion that the classes feel homogenous, the cheese feels like an overwhelming factor in every facet of the game's combat design, and it's going to lead to combat feeling very stagnant later on.

I will keep saying that there may be people that are fine with everything as is, but I absolutely know a lot of people will quickly change their tunes once they realize exactly what all of this spread out over a 80-100+ hour cRPG actually means. Some people have a higher tolerance for this sort of stuff, but I figured out that I don't - I currently have about 60 hours in BG3 and have zero desire to go back to it until there's even a hint that some of the problematic mechanics are being addressed, Bard or Paladin is officially added, or reactions/ready actions are being put in. But I have 600+ hours in DOS2, 50+ hours in Solasta EA, and 250+ hours in WotR Beta, and none of those games have yet to give me the same feeling that something is extremely off with the balance like BG3 already has.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Originally Posted by Maximuuus
My challenge is to find ways to improve my strategy and make better personnal choices. When a game keep throwing at my head that what I choose is NOT an optimal strategy, I don't feel rewarded at all. And that's exactly what BG3 is doing : it forces me to play a suboptimal gameplay if I want a bit of challenge OR embrace the optimal mechanics that will make the game way too easy or repetitive.

That is completely unfair and uninterresting to me.
I want to feel that MY choices are optimal even if yours may be even more. I want MY creativity to be rewarded.

Or in shorter words, the most overpowered things in BG3 in its current state don't actually have anything to do with your character builds (outside of maybe Great Weapon Master, and even then it's mostly the minotaur axes that enables that to be way stronger than usual). Most of the cheese consist of tools available to every single character from level 1. It's why some have the opinion that the classes feel homogenous, the cheese feels like an overwhelming factor in every facet of the game's combat design, and it's going to lead to combat feeling very stagnant later on.

I will keep saying that there may be people that are fine with everything as is, but I absolutely know a lot of people will quickly change their tunes once they realize exactly what all of this spread out over a 80-100+ hour cRPG actually means. Some people have a higher tolerance for this sort of stuff, but I figured out that I don't - I currently have about 60 hours in BG3 and have zero desire to go back to it until there's even a hint that some of the problematic mechanics are being addressed, Bard or Paladin is officially added, or reactions/ready actions are being put in. But I have 600+ hours in DOS2, 50+ hours in Solasta EA, and 250+ hours in WotR Beta, and none of those games have yet to give me the same feeling that something is extremely off with the balance like BG3 already has.

That's not a lot shorter to be honnest grin
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
- All characters benefit from high ground/backstab (whereas in other games e.g., DOSII only certain classes benefitted from high ground; and backstab is typically a rogue thing)
Point 2: DOS2 did have high ground that benefited everyone (and a low ground penalty), but it was several degrees far less severe than BG3's system. It affected damage bonus and attack range instead of accuracy. The amount of damage for being on high ground starts at +20% and increases by +10% for every point in Huntsman. The low ground penalty was -10% damage and never dropped any further than that. Granted, the Huntsman scaling was one of the reasons why archers became absolutely busted later on, but it's a stat bloat problem rather than a flaw with the actual mechanic. Huge difference from BG3's +5/-5 hit modifiers.
You mention Huntsman right there though. Weren't they the only 'class' that got increased bonuses for high ground? That was my point, that only a singular class (skill tree) was able to get significant bonuses from high ground.

@Blackheifer, I'm not quoting you because that would be long
1.) By and large we don't know what Larian plans to implement, so we have base our discussion off what we see in the game so far.
2.) No. Backstab is not a rogue ability. Sneak Attack is a rogue ability. These are separate. I was referring to Advantage from Backstab (which everyone gets), not 1d6 from sneak attack.
3.) Minotaur/phase spiders/bullete have a disengage+jump/teleport ability. I've also seen posters say that Patch 4 added more of these disengage abilities to BG3 but I don't remember which enemies were brought up...but that's still 3 of the hardest fights in the game. (Edit: Saito Hikari mentions the harpies)
4.) You literally give an example in your response, that in 5e, healing someone to 1hp is allowed under certain conditions. I'd be fine if you had to make a medicine check to bring an unconscious member back to 1 hp, as this would reward characters who put a proficiency there.
- 4b) I'm not claiming that this Help action invalidates clerics. But it does infringe on their typical abilities: namely bringing someone back from unconsciousness via Healing Word/Cure wounds/Paladin's Lay on Hands
5.) Shove: I don't disagree that shoving is fun (as long as it doesn't instakill bosses). But every class being given the ~low-cost ability to do so does make classes feel more uniform. Plus, at level 5 fighters/barbarians/paladins should be able to shove 2x per round using both of their attacks. Fights can shove 3x at level 11! This will not be possible in BG3. So if you like shoving, you want to be able to Shove using an attack-equivalent action.

About Solasta, I agree that the combats probably won't be made more difficult by changing the enemy AI, and this is an issue with it.
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
This feels very subjective in regards to a distinction. Can you provide me with some examples of BG3 Home Brew that makes all the characters feel the same? I think disengage BA is the only one I can think of. What other examples of Homebrew do you mean?

Off the top of my head, here are some of the many ways in which Larian homebrew devalues class features:
-Ubiquitous food and healing potions devalue classes that can heal.
-Anyone can cast any spell from a scroll; this devalues all spellcasters.
-Wizards can scribe any spell from a scroll; this devalues all non-wizard spellcasters.
-Advantage is readily accessible by anyone who moves to high ground or takes a couple of steps around an enemy; this devalues numerous spells and class features that impose advantage/disadvantage.
-The wide variety of magic arrows/throwables devalues characters who train to create effects that these consumables allow anyone to replicate (mostly evocation spells, but there's more).
-The same low range on all ranged weapons devalues characters that specialize in ranged attacks. A longbow requires more training than a shortbow (i.e. less classes have proficiency) and should be able to shoot much farther accurately (80/320 feet for the shortbow vs 150/600 feet for the longbow). Instead, they both have a range of 60 feet; the longbow just has a tiny damage boost. This problem carries over to spells with longer range as well.
-Reducing enemy AC and boosting their HP devalues spells with saving throws and particularly spells, like sleep, that care about an enemy's HP.
-Disengage as a bonus action for everyone devalues rogues and monks, for whom this is a significant feature of their low-level kit. It also devalues any character that cares about positioning in battle; enemies can just hop past your front line to get at your ranged characters with no repercussions.
-The ability to shove a cartoonishly long distance, potentially for significant damage, creates a tool that anyone can use and that overshadows most class features. It devalues every class.
-The lack of ability to shove prone removes a useful tool, both for battlefield positioning and for imposing advantage/disadvantage.
-Lack of a robust reaction system devalues any class that has more options for reactions than just "hit the first thing that moves away from me each round".

In general, Larian's drive to give everyone more bonus actions devalues classes with features that give them versatility with their bonus actions. D&D is not designed to give everyone a bonus action every round or even every fight. The ability to use bonus actions for lots of things is part of what makes rogues and monks shine. It makes sorcerers' quicken spell, bards' bardic inspiration, and paladins' various smites really valuable. These things become a lot less interesting when everyone gets a very useful shove/jump every turn.

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of examples, but this should be plenty. If it was just one or two things, you could argue that they'd just overlooked something. But this is very clearly Larian's M.O.; their homebrew is systematically devaluing the things that are special about individual classes, which makes all characters feel samey.

Originally Posted by Blackheifer
What balancing techniques do you feel would fix the overpowered Solasta characters?
I'm a designer, not a developer - it's someone else's job to tweak things until they are balanced. I care about the broad strokes. I want the gameplay to feel engaging and immersive; to do that, your game needs to have good bones first. Solasta has good bones - you might not like some of the quirks and the details of how they balanced things, but the mechanics are solid and the UI is solid. At any moment, it's very easy to know what your options are and what it means to choose one of those options.

BG3, on the other hand, is terrible on both mechanics and UI. Until you have a solid foundation to build on, talking about balance is meaningless.
I meant to add that mages can benefit pretty heavily from huntsman bonuses as well. A 2 level dip in Huntsman is recommended for Tactical Retreat alone as mages generally lack mobility skills otherwise and the haste attached to it is always great to have. The bonus +20% high ground damage is a significant boost in damage too. And they can get more levels in Huntsman from gear, which late game becomes a better investment once your favored elements are close to getting maxed out and provided that you can always get to high ground.

It's the same kind of principle as archers and necromancy builds investing in Warfare even if they have little use for the actual skills in it, because Warfare boosts ALL physical damage inflicted. It's why archers were able to one-round almost everything they looked at mid-late game in vanilla DOS2 until the definitive edition slightly nerfed them.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
I meant to add that mages can benefit pretty heavily from huntsman bonuses as well. A 2 level dip in Huntsman is recommended for Tactical Retreat alone as mages generally lack mobility skills otherwise and the haste attached to it is always great to have. The bonus +20% high ground damage is a significant boost in damage too. And they can get more levels in Huntsman from gear, which late game becomes a better investment once your favored elements are close to getting maxed out and provided that you can always get to high ground.

It's the same kind of principle as archers and necromancy builds investing in Warfare even if they have little use for the actual skills in it, because Warfare boosts ALL physical damage inflicted. It's why archers were able to one-round almost everything they looked at mid-late game in vanilla DOS2 until the definitive edition slightly nerfed them.

This is one of the reasons why I did not like D:OS2 system and I never finished the game.
I have the feeling that Larian hates classes. Every char should be able to do everything. In previous games the "class" only gave them different start abilities/stats but everyone could learn anything.

In BG3 the homebrew rules changes are so powerful that they make differences between classes pointless.
For example in 5E only rogues can hide as a bonus action which is powerful for them. In BG3 anyone can do it.
I think that the class is a very importent concept in DnD and different classes should feel different.

Yes Solasta does have homebrew stuff too.
Main reason is the licence, so they could only use one official subclass per class and they had to invent other subclasses.
I had a greenmage who gets light armor profiency, bow profiency, archery combat style and some ranger spells.
You can think that this is too powerful or not, but it is still a mage. Only mages can learn spells from scrolls and they can learn and use only spells that are on their spell list.
For example the only ranger spell I used for her was goodbarries so I do not have to carry rations.
(note to self: have to check if hunters mark works with multi hit spells and doubles the damage of magic missle for example)

So I think BG3 homebrew stuff is bad because it is more powerful than any class features and as result all classes feel the same.
The homebrew stuff in Solasta is less bad because the different classes stay different and each class keeps their class specific stuff.
We could argue if each individual rule change is too strong or too weak, but I believe that different classes should feel different.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.

Although I enjoyed these somewhat, they are janky a lot of the times. Particularly when aiming ranged attacks.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Please use actions, bonus actions and reactions properly, as written in the DnD rules. Solasta felt like a well balanced game. BG3 feels like complete cheese in comparison. Jumping behind enemies for backstab or shoot/hide while enemies stand there and do nthing feels so wrong.
I don't know, Solasta took plenty of liberties with the rules as well. The daylight spell has been heavily buffed for one. But yeah, it does take less liberties.

That said I can't say that means it is balanced. I still adjust the difficulty setting (thank the devs for those sliders!) to make the encounters more difficult (apart from the very start of the game, the first few encounters are incredibly annoying). And in BG3 you can get through encounters without using jump/barrelmancy etc and without those exploits the game seems fair enough.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- The way reaction are managed in Solasta is good. A window popping up "do you want to use this reaction now?" does not disturb the game flow. It does not happen every round and you can ask about several reactions at once..

Definitely.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Solasta shows you at character creation and at every level up what your character can learn at later levels, what subclasses you can select and what these subclasses will give you.
In BG3 its much harder to plan your character if you do not look in the wiki.

Useful, but would be nice if they gave you a list of Feats. Although I might have just missed that
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.
Strong disagree. Getting interrupted by random goblins/skeletons/bandits/etc is so tedious. Most of the time its just a waste of 5-10 minutes. Sure, you get some loot, but apart from that those don't add to the tension or anything.

Originally Posted by Madscientist
I really like that Solasta and Kingmaker/wotr use many different setting so each player can define its own difficulty.
It would be great if you can select enemy/player stats or your own adjustment of the rules separately.

Definitely, adjusting the difficulty is a great and easy way to balance the game for each player
Posted By: zamo Re: Some advice for BG3 after finishing Solasta - 14/06/21 01:43 PM
Originally Posted by Madscientist
(note to self: have to check if hunters mark works with multi hit spells and doubles the damage of magic missle for example)

Hunters mark works only with weapon attacks.
Originally Posted by zamo
Hunters mark works only with weapon attacks.

It used to affect magic spells that made attack rolls, back in the super early stages of the EA. Then I discovered a bug where it somehow multiplied the amount of scorching rays based on how many of the base rays hit (as in, 3 scorching rays somehow turned into 12, and upcasting it to level 3 turned 4 rays into 20), it spawned an argument that went for several hours in their discord about whether it working with magic was an intentional design choice for Greenmage, and the devs came in and said it wasn't and fixed it up real good in the following patch.
@Eugerome
about fast travel:
In Solasta I liked fast travel on a dungeon/town map.
You open the map, click on the goal and the character icon moves there fast on the normal path.
Technically you can still call it teleport but it felt more immersive for me.

I do not want the world map travel of Solasta in BG3.
I agree that travelling for minutes with the thread of enemy attacks would not great in BG3.
Solasta (and BG2) had a world map and you often travel for long times from one place to another. Monster attacks are plausible there.
In BG3 each act stays in one region and probably you will not travel between regions often.
I see where you are coming from. Travelling on a map does have its appeal, and it does allow for some extra in-game activities like crafting at the same time, which is pretty cool.

But I dislike that stuff and see it as filler. Does it make the world more believable - probably. Does it impact the game mechanically/story wise - not really. So I didn't like it in Solasta as well.

That said it could be just my problem. I skim read fiction books, so maybe I need to mellow down a bit.
Originally Posted by Eugerome
Travelling on a map does have its appeal, and it does allow for some extra in-game activities like crafting at the same time, which is pretty cool.
@Madscientis talks about fast travel mechanic in each individual map, not the world map. In Solasta it works pretty much the same as in BG3, except has less far fetched in-universe explenation (aka. they still travel, it's just you don't have to suffer through it) rather then magic teleporting thingies. It also allows triggers stuff on your way, so you won't "teleport" over a new event.
I had an idea and I think I understand now a little bit better what I do not like about BG3.

In BG3 you AC does not feel like a protection against enemy attacks, it feels more like a saving throw for half damage.
I believe that attacks that target your AC should simply miss if the attack roll is too low.
Maybe this is how Larian wants to reduce the numbers of full misses because they think this is boring.
Many physical attacks have an elemental part that hits anyway.
Solasta has goblins with fire arrows and spitting spiders too, but their misses just miss and this feels OK for me.

I still do not like it, but maybe I can understand their philosophy a bit better now.
I think that misses are OK when they make sense.
If you have high AC and you can give enemies disadvantage then they should miss you.
It is OK when you or the enemy can fully protect themselves from an attack if they spend a resource to do so, e.g. shield spell.
Misses are a normal part of gameplay, they are not a problem per se.
Only when inflated stats (on both sides, though usually its a matter of enemy stats) lead to a very high numbers of misses it becomes boring.
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
Originally Posted by Madscientist
- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.

No, just no. You are automatically put in combat when a character outside of combat range, gets 1 turn distance from combat. I am not going to spend 4 or 5 turns just to get a controlled character to the combat from 2 rooms over. It is just a bad idea.

Except, if he's 2 rooms over it SHOULD take several turns to get there. The combat shouldn't be frozen in time while you run around with other characters doing whatever you want.

Edit: Or in proper DND terminology "don't split the party"
Originally Posted by WebSpyder
Except, if he's 2 rooms over it SHOULD take several turns to get there. The combat shouldn't be frozen in time while you run around with other characters doing whatever you want.

Edit: Or in proper DND terminology "don't split the party"
You may want to roll in this thread https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=760775 on the matter of characters staying out of turn-based mode. And Pandemonica been there, their stance is just all the same - they want their videogamey exploit untouched even if there will be a compromise.
Originally Posted by Madscientist
I had an idea and I think I understand now a little bit better what I do not like about BG3.

In BG3 you AC does not feel like a protection against enemy attacks, it feels more like a saving throw for half damage.
I believe that attacks that target your AC should simply miss if the attack roll is too low.
Maybe this is how Larian wants to reduce the numbers of full misses because they think this is boring.
Many physical attacks have an elemental part that hits anyway.
Solasta has goblins with fire arrows and spitting spiders too, but their misses just miss and this feels OK for me.

I still do not like it, but maybe I can understand their philosophy a bit better now.
I think that misses are OK when they make sense.
If you have high AC and you can give enemies disadvantage then they should miss you.
It is OK when you or the enemy can fully protect themselves from an attack if they spend a resource to do so, e.g. shield spell.
Misses are a normal part of gameplay, they are not a problem per se.
Only when inflated stats (on both sides, though usually its a matter of enemy stats) lead to a very high numbers of misses it becomes boring.
I'm not quite sure what do you mean here. Because AC is working as AC in BG3, it creates misses, it has nothing to do with half damage. Is there any chance that you mistook one roll with another or mistook miss with a hit because currently the game doesn't always translate misses in proper animations?
I’m about 1.5 hours off 300 in BG3 - so I’m a fan.
I purchased solasta at 50% off as I’ve really been looking forward to it …
Lasted about 1-2 hours the first sorak encounter - terrible movement issues characters blocked - camera as bad as BG3’s can be - turned it off and haven’t gone back.
To say that solasta is a better game is just silly - it’s implementation of a couple of mechanics which could be implemented in bg3 I agree with but it’s also not a major if they don’t.
BG3 is head and shoulders on another level and if it doesn’t take anything from solasta I wouldn’t personally care. I still believe bg3 is a ways off full release so I am interested to see the next patch in 2022…
Originally Posted by Tarorn
I’m about 1.5 hours off 300 in BG3 - so I’m a fan.
I purchased solasta at 50% off as I’ve really been looking forward to it …
Lasted about 1-2 hours the first sorak encounter - terrible movement issues characters blocked - camera as bad as BG3’s can be - turned it off and haven’t gone back.
To say that solasta is a better game is just silly - it’s implementation of a couple of mechanics which could be implemented in bg3 I agree with but it’s also not a major if they don’t.
BG3 is head and shoulders on another level and if it doesn’t take anything from solasta I wouldn’t personally care. I still believe bg3 is a ways off full release so I am interested to see the next patch in 2022…

Calling someone's opinion silly just because it doesn't agree with yours is silly. See how that works? BG3 is higher budget with better graphics and (IMO) a more engaging story. Beyond that though, Solasta is superior, hands down.

Movement issues? At least you don't get boxed in by your own companions and have to walk your full movement in a circle just to get around them.

Camera issues? Totally agree. Both games blow in the camera control department.

A couple mechanics? Solasta far and above implements 5e mechanics both more faithfully and simply better from a user experience perspective. It isn't just a couple mechanics... its virtually the entire system that Larian claims they're being as faithful as possible to.

Don't even get me started on the vastly different loot systems. Solasta doesn't bog down gameplay with the majority of the time being looting tiny items and empty containers.
Originally Posted by WebSpyder
Movement issues? At least you don't get boxed in by your own companions and have to walk your full movement in a circle just to get around them.
I have had to spend turns in Solasta because of other characters blocking the way (which was my own fault for not considering the positioning before-hand), so it seems like just a common thing between both games.

Quote
Don't even get me started on the vastly different loot systems. Solasta doesn't bog down gameplay with the majority of the time being looting tiny items and empty containers.
This is probably where the Ultima 7 influence of D:OS is bleeding into BG3. I don't really care one way or another, since I agree that it does slow down gameplay, but I think it does also make the world feel more interesting and reactive.
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