Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian please add another difficulty. Game is too easy

Lobby for a return of the Create Food & Water spell? I think they should make it a ritual so it doesn't take a spell slot, personally, because it isn't very good, but it would allow you to skip any camp supplies you find (unless you have a Chimpanzee Aspect Barbarian).

I probably got killed in all the hardest fights in Act 1, at least once. In my first playthrough, I died at the hands of Lump, the Goblins at the windmill, the giant spider, and the githyanki (both in front of the mountain pass and in the creche), and the duergar got me twice; I kept trying to talk to everyone and it often went bad because I didn't always choose the easy path and sometimes just got unlucky. I'm mucking around in Act 1 waiting for (crossing fingers) custom parties before moving on to Act 2 because I welcome the challenge. I don't think I'm going to get killed very often in Act 1 now that I know what to watch out for. I understand the desire for Tactician+ for those who want multiple playthroughs, but I don't think it is fun to get killed more than once every 10 hours or so, so I'm pretty happy with Tactician as it is now.

As I've said before, I feel like all these problems go away if you just get to pick your Point Buy (higher or lower than 27, depending on whether you want it easier or harder). I think with a minor tactical mistake or some bad luck, I could still lose a fight in Tactician even now; I have to be careful. If I lowered Point Buy to 18 or so, I feel like some of these fights I am now confident about would become trickier.

Well goodberries can be used as camp food.

Currently I'm struggling on the moonrise fight, I throw down a cloudkill and all the idiot npc 'allies' just zerg right into it, then the enemy casters spam black hole and evards tentacles and I can't move past the other idiot allies.

I got Jaheira to join the party just so she doesn't go panther zerg into my spells, but she doesn't come with many usable spells other than thorn whip, entangle and ice storm.

I was unable to get Jaheira into party so she was always dying, and in case you didn't know, there is a way to skip this fight by jumping\teleporting to the balcony etc., it was the only way to save her, this fight is one of the hardest so far.

I beat it then one of harpers just walks through the lingering cloudkill and they all turn red.

I didn't want to kill em all, too much bother, fortunately I saved before landing the killing blow, then enter turn based mode, equip guidance necklace, cancel cloudkill :x

The thing that makes it hard is all the idiot harpers.

I feel like playing another game! There is some tough fighting in tactician mode.

However, I still agree with you, as the AI is d..b. as f..k.!
It definitely needs some improvement !

The core of the problem is that there are just 3 levels of difficulty for millions of players. There are gonna be a lot of people at both ends who are not suited by either the easiest or hardest difficulty levels. I am sure there will eventually be 5 default levels with hopefully a custom setting with sliders for everything like Owlcat and Solasta guys do. Why didn't they do that already? They are stubborn about dumb common sense stuff.

In the meantime if you want to make it more of a challenge you can just do it yourself with some self control. I know that is not ideal but it is more realistic than suggestions in a thread being coded into the game in the near future.

Agreed!!!

Combat is not super easy, but getting ready to it IS.

An additional "Hardcore" or "Seasoned Tactician" mode with increased difficulty would be super cool.

Some suggestions, which I believe should be simple to implement (well, maybe not SIMPLE simple, but doable)

• Make pickpocketing harder and with harsher consequences
• Using stolen itens in front of original vendor should have some consequence
• Increase cost of scrolls, maybe make them harder to find too
• Limit resting to safe areas
• Limit saving the game to long rests, no quicksaves allowed
• Make supplies harder to find, make them rot, or simply Increase the number of required food to rest
• Split required resting supplies between edibles and liquids
• Using Teleportation circles requires you to be standing next to one
• Using Teleportation circles without resting causes psychic damage
• Increase the cost of ressurection and respec tenfold (Withers)
• Add material component cost to to revivify spell (500 GP?)
• Dead characters could miss the XP earned from enemies killed while they were dead
• Critical failures (and misses) should have more consequences (maybe add a 5% chance of breaking the weapon and requiring having it repaired)
• We should be unable to tune the difficulty down in this hardcore mode
• Naturally, with pain comes gain! So, it would be nice to see some hall of fame for people who beat the game in this mode. Or maybe exclusive content of some kind.

P.S. I simply LOVE the game and I find it very pleasing to play already! Looking forward to play it all over again in a harder mode!

Read what you're replying to again. No one said anything about taking anything away from anybody.

My experience with tactician...

In general i had fun in tactician, and to be honest im still not aware of differences between tactician compared to others.

Folks, please add spoiler tags when talking about specific encounters.

I agree with a lot of these, particularly on pickpocketing, use of stolen items, and adjusting it downward. I was really surprised to see how easy pickpocketing is and that there are no consequences for reselling stolen goods, that's something I've seen in a lot of other similar games. You should at least have to resell stolen stuff to a fence or someone in a different area.

Long resting also seems to lack consequence the way it is now. I'm pretty sure I could long rest before every major fight and still have enough to do it 20 times by the end. I think it makes selling jobs like Warlock harder when you can just long rest to recover everything, it reduces strategy between fights and I can just default to higher level AoE spells with no real impact. I was surprised at how many resources for this exist, it kindof feels like they should just remove that element entirely unless they scale it on difficulty, it doesn't do much when you consider the amount of times you can do it. The times I avoided it, I mainly did so to avoid progressing the story during resting.

I don't think limiting teleporting is a good idea, though, that doesn't really change the difficulty that much and just adds more time running. Unless they add some kind of respawn mechanic, there are very few places this would have any impact in the game, usually by the time you've unlocked a portal, you have already done any consequential content in that area. I also HATE breakage mechanics in games, there's no system in place for this right now (you'd need a way to repair), so it seems unlikely or like a lot of work for one difficulty setting. I do agree some type of debuff should exist for crit failures though, I was surprised that wasn't a thing (if you roll a nat 1 in 5e, does something bad happen?).

I don't think mucking with saves is a good idea at this point though, I crashed 5 times at the end of Shadowheart's companion quest in the final area and probably crash 2-3 times per hour. When the game is more stable, though, I think that may make sense.

I agree with some of this, but I don't think the number of scrolls you can find is a problem. Running out of food and water is not a D&D thing, so I think it would be a mistake to make players grind for more resources. I would only change resurrection/respec/revivify costs by Difficulty; they should be cheap on Story Mode and (maybe) unavailable on Hardcore Mode (one above Tactician). I wouldn't make dead NPCs drop behind others in XP because the game is more fun when everyone acts as a team; I don't want an inferior member. Heck, I don't even like that the characters sometimes go up levels at a slightly different rate; I want them to advance all at the same time. Breaking weapons is not a D&D thing. Handle players who want to shift between difficulty modes with Achievements. It's a singleplayer game, so "keeping players honest" is entirely optional. If you want to prove you played the whole game on Tactician Difficulty, show them a "Tactical Genius" achievement; Hall of Fame is fine, too.

All of that said, I agree it would be nice if there was a way to limit Long Rests. I'd probably handle it with wandering monsters that give you no XP if you encounter and defeat them. As long as the player sees there is a repercussion (however minor) it might be enough to encourage pushing through, though I think once you make it so onerous that the player would not reasonably choose to take a Long Rest, I think it has gone too far. It might be enough to just show how many days it has taken "so far" as a kind of scorecard. If you are on your 15th day in Act 1, you might start feeling like you should pick up the pace for no other reason than the number looks big. You could also sprinkle some concept of urgency into 3 or 4 quests or encounters, like if you get the mcguffin back to the quest giver in fewer days, you get a bigger reward. Maybe reduce XP across the board by about 10%, then give it back at certain checkpoints with a multiple that depends on how fast you got there. Something like that. (I think there is slightly too much XP in the game now anyway, given the Level 12 cap.)

Having finished my playthrough on 'normal', I just started a game on Tactician (now with monk as MC) and I really don't like they way they have 'amped up' encounters - giving monsters/NPCs things they simply wouldn't have (I mean how do you justify that from a story/lore perspective?). It seems you are expected to use cheesy tactics/builds - I know the encounters so it is not too bad, but if as a new player you simply walk into them directly (through reasonable dialogue) they can be fatal if you lose initiative. That is not not about tactics - it's about luck. Just 2 examples - not far in yet, and may stop - it's already feeling like a chore:

(1) Walked up to blighted village - thought let me try some new dialogue choices, failed, they won initiative - shot the conveniently placed firewine barrel *right where they auto-place you in dialogue* with a fire arrow, and immediately 2 of my PCs were unconscious. We were all 'surprised' even though anyone with half a brain (having seen dead goblins/adventurers and having engaged with a hostile goblin lookout) would expect that you may be attacked at any moment...nope, seems it was scripted that way (I'm assuming losing normal initiative should *not* give you the surprised condition) . So, snuck in, when went around got high ground and attacked - then it was trivial. That's not 'tactics' - it simply shows how broken stealth is. You should be able to start from the initial encounter - with no meta game knowledge - and have a reasonable chance of success.

(2) When rescuing the gnome - I walked in, thought I'd try a non-illithid persuade check - failed - all lost initiative (can't recall if I was 'surprised' again) and Fezzerk (sp?) rushed in and did insane damage (for a lvl 3 chracter) and immediately dropped my MC, then all the other goblins came in with spells, incendiaries and it didn't go well (crit, crit etc etc). I then replayed it with some more sneaking etc (which is still broken - no checks outside of vision cones outside of combat) and then won that (was still not quick) . But that really feels like cheating.

This just confirms my suspicions that you have to play by Larian's cheesy mechanics (abuse of stealth, haste extra full action, surfaces etc) if you want to succeed.... rather make the encounters smarter than simply giving every gobbo and their grandmother even more things/abilities.

What I really want is a D&D 5e authentic/hardcore mode - which all other BG games had - where the rules (esp the action economy) are respected. Larian destroyed that with excessive item access, universal spell scrolls (and grease bottles, fire arrows etc) for everyone. And man, their obsession with surfaces...

^^This^^ is precisely what the game needs most.

When you rely on rolling dice for a successful hit on a knockdown opponent, it is about luck ^^ And part of the genre/game mechanic.
I will appreciate playing by the rule, but unfortunately and again, I am afraid the AI and the game itself cannot handle players creativity and imagination !

Still enjoying the game, even if I hate the rolling dice thing.
It has been a very long time since I enjoyed playing an RPG video game (Dragon age origin).

Excellent suggestions, these would be well suited for an 'ironman' style mode, separate from the difficulty setting itself. I still think actual encounter difficulty increases are needed though, but between this and some thoughtful tweaks to player or encounter strength I think you could make a really great game mode.

I find Tactician on DOS2 easier still - it was a simpler game, a simpler time.

I think the real thing is, if you get halfway through an encounter and find it going south in BG3 (or most games tbh), using your knowledge of the encounter the next run makes it 10x easier. Maybe if there was some form of randomization new difficulty mode, where when you come into each set combat encounter, it's been changed up to make you think on your feet, and chuck Ironman in there for good measure.

That would be some Hellscape hardness right there - not knowing the NPCs skills and taking away save scumming...you'd be tanked in no time lol.

Death in video game : die and retry
In some cases, retry doesn't make things easier but I got your point, intel and knowledge are good advantages.

Changing skills and behavior would be great for an action game.
Here with rolling dices, it is already a nightmare : last night, my team of level 12 against One deva level 10, circling him, no buff, debuff but still missed 5 times in a row !
No tactician just a silly hard mode :p

The main problem for me in the OP's thread is mentioning the wish for a challenge and at the same time sneak attacks as problem. What seems to be the problem is the abuse of game mechanics meant differently or designed poorly. There is no need for a higher difficulty for my taste but a need for a 5e game with normal abilities and hp, restricted loot, no abundance of gadgets and no easy way to abuse game mechanics. Probably impossible to do with decent effort, I fear.