Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Balance

I believe i still didnt see even single example of advertisement of any sort that would contain such promise. O_o

Wich should still be your call ...
In other words: In any and i mean ANY case, when you get feeling that game doesnt work ... and i repeat once more in ANY way ... you have all right to change it aproprietly.

Thats the hard life of game developer ...
You are standing between two groups and each decision that will please one, will most likely angry the other.
Sometimes it seems like decision if you wish to be shot to left, or right knee ... everybody would prefer not be shot at all, but that option is not on the list.

Aswell as anyone who will tell you exact oposite, since too many things are still hidden from us ...
In other words, such judgement is impossible until game will be fully out and we shall have all classes at max level fully explored. :P

I would dare to presume most people gathered as much from this topic ...

The real question tho isnt "what" is a problem ... but "why" is that a problem?
The only answer i have found so far is that people are pissed off that they cant metagame their enemies ... that is something i would expect from some around here aswell, but not you, Niara. O_o

Nobody ever said they dont.
So ... im not quite sure why even mention that. :-/

I hope this is a joke ...

As long as the creature have over its head written "A troll" its horrible disrespect for the source material ... but once its changed to "B troll" all is fine, nobody gets offended, and everyone are happy with that beautifull perfect creature. -_-

Disagree ... i dont know monsters from DnD too well, and fighting with Intellect Devourers on the beach certainly ADDED soemthing extra for me ... fighting there with some giant rats, wild dogs, or huge crabs would be mechanicaly exactly the same ...
But fighting there Intellect Devourers, even for someone so oblivious to DnD there was direct link between the creature and the ship! Its called narrative immersion. :-/

I could understand it, if that would be other way around ...

Like if someone would clain that Beholder can scrath you with his claws ... or if someone would clain that jelly blob can shoot beams from his eyes ... or i dunno, that Kobold hit you with his Fin ...

Then i would totaly understand that people are pissed off.

But what exactly restrict devourer to attack with his claws? o_O
Same goes for Imps ...
Same goes for Phase Spiders (and their poison spitting attack) ... there are spiders that can spit poison you know

Your conclusion is wrong here ...

I also admit that im totally fine how they have been rebalanced ...
I also didnt know (before this whole topic started ... GM4Him is talking about this for some time, so i catched something in the process) how they have been rebalanced ... so indeed i was also unaware of how they are meant to be ...

But no, i would certainly NOT be happy if the creatures would look different and had different name. :-/
(Unless you are talking about trivial differences as having one less tentacle and therefore being new sub-species, or slightly different collors and therefore being new sub-species ... as it usualy goes in biology)

It seems to me that it was sufficient enough.

But why i that problem?

I didnt play Solasta and i only endured it for few minues, when Wolfheart streamed it ... but all enemies i have seen were wolves, bears, and some lizards ...

Cant quite imagine how would anyone make such creature inaproprietly.

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I dunno ... i gues im unable to see the problem bcs im used to homebrewing mobs ...
Just in our last session we have fought Giant Lizard ... that attacked us with his claws, jaws, tail, and even pressed our fighter to the wall with his hind leg ...
It was fun ... nobody cared that half of those attacks were "not by the book" ... and nobody even mentioned that the Lizard had aproximately thrice as much HP, and quite certainly different stats.

80~90% of the rules? I wish, it would be called Solasta if that was the case. More like <50%, including changing or not implementing core mechanics and class features. Also the monsters they should implement are balanced around said core mechanics and features.

I'll emphasize this point. Regardless of how much leeway you think Larian has as a DM (from "obligated to run 5e RAW" to "can and should change anything including use of the d20") Larian's goal should be to make a better, more enjoyable game. Any decision they make should be with this in mind. "Better" of course depends on a lot of things - more enjoyable, less work, less offensive, thought-provoking, etc.

If X% of players dislike a change, and the remaining Y% don't care about it, then said implementation strictly harms the final product and the decision to implement that change is bad. Now obviously there's some non-zero number of tabletop D&D players who like Larian's monster changes. But from what I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, the PnP players who dislike the homebrewed monsters significantly outnumber PnP players who actively like the changes (again, people who are indifferent don't matter).

As to why: e.g., I know that Mind Flayers and Intellect Devourers are super terrifying enemies in PnP. So in BG3, I start out super cautious and wary of them, making encounters with them more tense and interesting. And then I realize they're ~pushovers lacking their signature abilities, which is disappointing and remains disappointing any future times I encounter them.

Smarmy pedantism ill-suites you, Rag – you've seen, read and even quoted back the relevant quotes multiple times over the past year. You know, exactly, which quotes I'm referencing, and pretending otherwise is being contrary and arguing for the sake of doing so, as well as being deeply disingenuous.


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Someone asked what the problem was; I explained. Please pay attention.
Metagaming the statistics has been no part of the complaints thus far, either. Again; please pay attention.

If you see an iconic D&D creature and you get a little excited/happy thrill from encountering it, that emotional reaction mostly comes from your understanding of the creature and what it is – that's not metagaming and that's not using your understanding in a game sense – this is purely at the emotive and experiential level. If these creatures then turn out to, actually, not be much like themselves, and don't really behave like the icons they're claiming to be, then, really, they're just not those creatures, and it's disappointing and deflating. It's a negative experience.

If you don't know anything about these creatures and you aren't a D&D player, and you don't really have any understanding of them, they you don't get that reaction – you just get the general excitement and positive adventure feeling of encountering something new and unknown to engage with and be surprised by. That's great too.

Point is, however, that you who does not know these things or have this understanding would get the same positive experience from a creature that fits its behaviour and matches up visually and aesthetically with what it does, and had a name and a creature type and behaviour... and you wouldn't experience any difference between whether it was named one thing or another. This is a positive experience, and more pointedly, your experience of it is the same either way.

So... why are you raising objection to people wanting their experience to not suffer that kind of negative impact, in a way that literally does not affect you at all? … Or are you really saying that if the creatures you fight on the ship had not, specifically, been intellect devourers – creatures that you aren't familiar with and don't have any real understanding of – but had instead been some other illithid-themed creature that patrolled their ship and had a simple ability set to match their actual behaviour, which was the same... that somehow, despite having zero frame of reference and zero understanding of the difference, or that there is even was a difference... that somehow, this would negatively impact your experience of the game, enough that you'd feel unhappy about Larian's decision to do this?

If they'd had you fight stray cats in the ship, sure, that would have been narrative inappropriate... but the point that's being made here is that Larian have the freedom to create things that are appropriate, if nothing appropriate exists, and that it is their duty to do so. If Intellect devourers were too powerful creature for us to be facing (and they are), then they could and should create something else – a variant creature that has the restricted capabilities and strengths – and name it as a variant clearly, so players can build up their grounding of the world lore reliably - or a completely new illithid-themed creature that matched what they wanted.

What if, for example, you'd been forced to fight Ceratopedes about the ship instead of statistically crippled intellect devourers? These critters are a CR ¼ creature that scuttles about Illithid ships often doing cleaning and maintenance on its organic parts. They're about the size of a medium-sized dog, but about six feet long, and crawl about on about twenty or so spindly legs, each with a little grasping tetra-claw on the end. Their main bodies look like stretched out strips of crenellated brain matter, fused to flexible muscle fibre (often with a variable number of smaller, finer sensory feelers that extend from their body like thick, wavy hairs); they can crawl on walls, and are fast, but not overly sturdy; they can deliver painful claw stabs to creatures when threatened, or when defending the ship, and are perpetually tied into the ships neural network, as other creatures of the illithid's ritual designs are. Killing one of these as they escape from their confinement would be a perfect challenge for a fresh level one adventurer on their own.

Then we might later learn that we were lucky not to encounter any intellect devourers, another common feature on nautiloids, and learn about how lethally dangerous that would have been – and then maybe later still we might encounter them, and be excited by the anticipation of this greater danger.

Why are you arguing against this? Why are you contending that the current situation is better? Explain that to me.

You're saying that this would make you unhappy.... even though you didn't know what Intellect Devourers were before experiencing them, and had they not been used you still wouldn't – and this creature would instead have been your first experience of illithid-themed servant creatures on their ship. Do you legitimately say that you'd have been unhappy with this, and with anything else, except actual intellect devourers, which you didn't know existed before hand? Because that is simply not possible; it would be a lie for the sake of being contrary.

Why do you hate Ceratopedes so much, that their presence would make you unhappy? Why are you against them scuttling about on the nautiloid, being a challenge appropriate creature for level one adventurers to fight in the intro? Why do you object to Larian using them, or something similar, instead of statistically- and capability-crippled intellect devourers, that undermine how legitimately dangerous those iconic creatures are?

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Below this you say a bunch of things that are directly addressed by other parts of the same comment, so, I'm going to ignore all of that, since you can answer it yourself by actually reading the comment I made as a full response, rather than nit-picking single lines and complaining that they aren't relevant, while the very next line illustrates their relevance. I'm not going to play that game, Rag. Read, Comprehend, THEN respond. I know you've said that doing that is difficult for you; at this stage, that's not my problem anymore – it just reflects poorly on you and I'm trying to offer you some well-intended advice for how to mitigate that.

This however:


No; I'm dead serious. The fact that you think I might be joking here is just showing that you are somehow not on the same page as most other people discussing here. I'm completely serious. As I said: they are free to invent new creatures, and new variant creatures, as much as they like, to fill in the exact niches of creature type and behaviour they want, if they don't find something suitable. It's even encouraged. If they want a troll that spits fire and flies, however, what they can't do is just call it a normal troll. They have to call it something new, because it is something new. It's as simple as that; that's literally all they need to do... and they're not doing it.

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The first required encounter in the first story dungeon contains TA custom monsters. I'd suggest you go play the game, or watch someone else play it, or read up on its bestiary, or do whatever else you need to do to improve your understanding of the point before making ill-informed comments against it ^.^ It'll save everyone else some time. My comment about their creature creation stands; your ignorance of it doesn't constitute a counter-point.

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What you describe in your personal anecdote is not homebrewing; it's re-skinning (and it might not even be that), which is part of the DM's standard toolkit. It sounds like you weren't the DM, so you don't even really know what you fought, in that sense; you're guessing – you say giant lizard, because it was described to you as a giant lizard creature – but if it were one of the other large lizard creatures (large subteranean lizard, for example), then it would have about three times the hp as a generic giant lizard, a tail attack, its attacks would be capable of grappling (Re, pinned to wall), and in general it would be a more appropriate challenge for a party of adventurers. Sounds like it wasn't a homebrew at all actually. Sounds like you fought a very large lizard, and you're guessing incorrectly about which creature it was.

Either way, your example is not even remotely analogous to what is being discussed here.

I got the 80 to 90% from discussions on Steam where similar "We were betrayed" wars rage for ever. It was said by people who seemed to me to know about DnD from their arguments and experiences as (alleged) GMs. But of course such numbers are highly subjective and debatable.

It gets even more difficult as different multiplicators for the magnitude of changes had to be taken into account. For example, a change to the armor mechanic would be huge (and I wish Larian would have changed the stupid DnD AC system which is perhaps necessary for PnP but an insult to mind on PC, as better systems are easily found and could be calculated), while a change to some monster's hp or abilities at least for me is neglectable even if I put myself in the position of a DnD fan, as the changes don't seem to be massive in most cases. Gameplay-wise it is no difference whether we got a changed DnD monster or a new monster with the same stats.

So this discussion is not about balance. Larian does not suck because they got the balance wrong. The discussion is, as usual, about disappointment that Larian changed DnD stuff.

I'm not saying that all changes are bad, but many changes on monsters are huge and not neglectable gameplay-wise.

- I find the changes to phase spiders absolutely terrible. It makes combats against them slower than they should and/or nearly 100% ranged oriented. The "Dancing Light" spell as implemented doesn't help, especially if all your characters doesn't have nightvision.
- It's exactly the same with harpies and considering their area design, it's even slower because you're often lower than them. It makes our characters run a lot more than they would if the harpies had proper DnD actions.
- Minotaurs now have an AoE jump that allow them to disengage and to reach our weaker characters easily (So is their charge if I'm not wrong). Melee characters should be able to protect them or deal damages if minotaurs rushes your second lines... they aren't.
- Goblins and many other creatures can shove as a bonus action... which become a part of many combats for various reasons (push you of course - which may lead to insta death or a lot of additionnal movements - waking sleeping characters up, disengage)
- Many creatures also have more HP than they should, making the "sleep" spell less usefull.
- Some creatures also have higher ability score, which mean in exemple that their ST are better than they should. This can really mean something when you cast a spell.

I guess we could also talk about the massive amount of consumables that gives extra actions to many ennemies but it would probably lead us a bit too far.
That's just a few exemples. TBH as a non-DnD player I haven't gone so far into analysing this but a lot of changes aren't neglectable whatever we don't care, we like them or not.

Of course, it wouldn't change anything gameplay-wise if the "phase spiders" of BG3 were called "spitting spiders".
But I guess most of us can easily understand the dissapointment when something you like for years is suddenly changed. Only DnD fans care about the "iconic DnD creatures" so if you want to satisfy the fans, you create something that corresponds to what the fans are fans of and not a different version of it with the same name... On top of that many DnD creatures are better gameplay-wise than Larian's creatures as stated above. Personnal opinion though.

i just want to put my personal opinion. i don't like what larian is doing. especially with the ruleset. first and foremost it's a dnd5e game. it's a dungeon & dragons game. i would appreciate if they stick to the core rules and monsters statblock and balance it differently and not turn it to their DOS formula. if they don't respect the franchise, might as well don't work on it at all.

The biggest issue for me is when you look at the enemies stats and they have ability modifiers that are impossible for L4/L5. Why do Githyanki warriors, for example, have such high Wisdom? Githyanki have STR and INT and we are facing Fighters. It would be logical for them to have STR, CON, maybe some DEX, and possibly INT.

Why are their WIS modifiers so high? This is the same with sooo many other enemies.

You know ... i really wanted to tell you lot of things, but somehow i came to conclusion that there is no point ... since we would be repeating the same shit for 10,459th ...

So i just wanted you to know that i read it.

Regarding lower level monsters with psionic capability, I believe the Gray Ooze was capable of psionic attack? Perfect for a beach encounter!

I think the main point of this topic is not so much whether the encounter difficulty is matched to the player party abilities, but more that certain types of traditional D&D monsters were created and intended specifically for higher level play. Drow parties, mind flayers, and intellect devourers are traditionally in the same class as the mid-to-high level demons and devils, and direct combat with such creatures with a low character party level does seem a bit "over the top".

For level 1-3 adventures, I would expect stuff like wolves, giant frogs, zombies, goblins, violet fungi, etc., to be most of the combatants, with bosses being something like an ogre or a werewolf. Jumping right into Drow and intellect devourers when my mage has only three spells to cast, one of which is identify, ... ooh, I don't know. It makes me think of a scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life involving the word "stampede".

That's right: the difficulty of a standard Drow patrol/raiding party ought to begin at CR 3.

Endless circular arguing does nothing for the discussion and is just fucking exhausting to read. And I'm about 90% sure you both have had this exact argument six months ago.

So I'm going to quote someone else's post


Thank You for saying it. (Although 2 bulettes against 4 level 5 characters is still a deadly encounter, and if you are unlucky enough to attract the attention of the minos while fighting the bulettes, then woe, tpk be upon ye.)
Trying to achieve a satisfactory balance is futile, when the creatures in question have been given abilities beyond the scope of their pnp versions. This fundamentally changes the way they work, and affects the balance of encounters because their CR levels have not been adjusted for their new abilities. What was a medium encounter becomes an encounter with a difficulty ranging from hard to cheese-or-die.

And there are more than a couple of cheese-or-die encounters in the EA already. It possible that reduced/increased difficulty levels on launch will mitigate this, but we can only give feedback on what we have now, not what we might have in the future.