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#678355 07/10/20 09:41 AM
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So I have played about 12 hours in the early access and I will preface the feedback I'm about to give by saying I am really enjoying the game so far. That being said as a fan of rogues in 5e I do have some pain points about how they are handled in the game.


Sneak attack

To start of my sneak attack doesn't scale or at least as far as I have played. I am a level 4 rogue right now and the ability still says 1d6 for a sneak attack when normally it increases by another dice every odd level.

I can not sneak attack with an offhand attack. Sneak attack being a 1 per turn ability usually incentivizes dual wielding as it doubles your chances of one attack landing and dumping your sneak attack dice into the enemy every turn.

Sneak attack feels tedious to specify every time. This wasn't such a big deal until I fought a target that was mirror imaged while I was hasted. I missed my first attack to an image and then wasted some damage neglecting to hit the button again. This scenario also was made more frustrating as I spent my two main hand attacks attempting to get the sneak attack but ended up hitting the images and then had to use the offhand without sneak damage even though it was technically available in the normal rules.

The first issue I think may be a bug but if its the intention I'm not sure I agree with that direction for sneak attack. The last two issues could be resolved by having a toggle similar to the attack of opportunity toggle for sneak attack that just applies to the damage to the first applicable weapon strike from the rogue, regardless of mainhand or offhand.


Cunning action

This is probably going to cause some controversy but disengage should not be a bonus action for everyone. It removes a core weakness of some classes while devaluing a main rogue feature in the game. Rogues in my games have always been lagging behind in power of other classes but they re more versatile with their action economy which made them appeal to me. Being able to disengage as a bonus and then dash to double move with no attacks provoked is a very rogue like thing but cunning action in this game has basically been reduced to bonus action dash. Its also extremely frustrating that every enemy in the game that you corner can easily jump past your characters and run away.

I would implore you to consider making disengage cost an action again to make your movement not provoke rather than make it a bonus action leap that's free movement for everyone.

Expertise

I'm disappointed expertise was left out of the rogue class.


Some non-rogue things I have noticed

Everyone can use scrolls. Maybe a holdover from divinity but it feels wrong. Considering the level 13 thief ability of use magic device (which I hope is in the game as its my favorite ability) it also takes some wind out of the rogues sails but it feels odd that my battle master fighter has cast more non cantrip spells than my wizard and cleric combined.

Shove as a bonus action and not requiring an athletics check from what I can tell feels way too strong but incredibly fun.

Pindown and Slash feel like they should be battlemaster only or fighter only. Topple and crush seem fine available to everyone. At the end of the day though this is far from a deal breaker and if more people like it than hate it I'd rather it stay as is.

I have no clue how to use mage hand in this game. I summoned the hand over an object and then it dissipated shortly after I tried to interact with it with my cursor clicking on it.

Off hand attacks are adding stat modifiers to damage. Not sure if this was a design choice or a mistake but 5e required additional investment of the two weapon fighting style in fighter to achieve this. If it is on purpose than two weapons will almost always out pace two handed weapons.

Could we get a hotkey to toggle more detailed tooltips? An example would be I see my attack has 95% accuracy but I could hold alt or control to see how that calculation was made.

Can we get a UI element or dialogue to let use know when a trap disarm kit or thieves tools is consumed. I seemingly disarmed 6 or 7 traps in a row until I failed one and found out my kit was consumed afterwards.

The AI goes out of their way to finish off downed players. Maybe its how my tabletop games are ran but this feels like odd behavior for both intelligent enemies and simple minded ones. An intelligent enemy will know that their time is better spent dealing with he active party members while one is on the floor bleeding to death and an unintelligent enemy feels like it would do the same as the downed party is no longer a threat in their mind. I can logically see if a party flees from their downed member an enemy going back to finish the job or a NPC with a specific vendetta against a party member would have reason to ensure they are dead but otherwise it feels unnatural and a jerk move form the AI.

There doesn't seem to be a way to disengage from combat. Without spoilers my main character went left in a fork in the road rather than right where an NPC was and triggered a group of level 2 enemies when I was still level 1. I dashed around a corner and hid. The enemies stopped pursuing but combat led on for many rounds until I eventually just reloaded my last save and went right instead.

In the above scenario I also found out the game doesn't auto save after a very important story moment that led up to said fork in the road. That feels like an oversight considering the hard loading screen after crash landing.

Astarion revealed his secret nonchalantly in dialogue related to my talk with the Cambion. I then rested again and happened upon what I assume was supposed to be the actual way his secret is revealed to the player and my character was surprised to find out a second time. I don't know what triggers either but felt out of sequence in this specific case.



That being said, I am really enjoying my time despite the above issues I have. What I am most impressed by is the dialogue of all the characters even the minor characters like the children in the grove caught me off guard with how much detail and care was put into each one. I am also appreciating the effort that went into making the environment intractable in combat. My favorite two experiences so far are when I had pushed gunpowder barrels off of the rafters onto a burning brazier too thin out a room of enemies and when an enemy had pushed my party member into a spider pit to my surprise. Even in an early access state this game is very fun and entertaining.

Last edited by CaptainNetz; 07/10/20 09:45 AM.
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Originally Posted by CaptainNetz

There doesn't seem to be a way to disengage from combat. Without spoilers my main character went left in a fork in the road rather than right where an NPC was and triggered a group of level 2 enemies when I was still level 1. I dashed around a corner and hid. The enemies stopped pursuing but combat led on for many rounds until I eventually just reloaded my last save and went right instead.


I agree with everything you said regarding the rogue status ; I've made comments in other posts concerning spell scrolls for everyone, action economy and disengage as a bonus action...

But this, this is also a major problem I faced when playing DOS:2. I've had countless times when after dealing with a combat (so surfaces everywhere still lingering), one of my characters, being linked to the others, went all the way to join them, walking around the surfaces to avoid damage automatically, and eventually ending up triggering another encounter at the other side of the map, isolated and ready to die !


Last edited by Temperance; 07/10/20 10:02 AM.
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I agree, 5E rogues were built around the assumption that they would get sneak attack every round. Without it they are by far the weakest damage dealers in the game. I am playing through as a rogue and am not having that much fun with stealth / trying to ambush people from the shadows. Expertise needs to be added as that is so key to rogues.



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I believe that the universal ability to disengage as a bonus action does in fact depower rogues until rogues get a 2nd bonus action, at which point they get a huge buff in comparison. So to me, that's almost a wash.

The way sneak attacks currently function is in fact somewhat tedious and strange. I heavily suggest that sneak attacks automatically be applied to any target which is threatened, or for which the rogue has advantage to hit, capped at 1 per turn. This is obviously the way they work in 5e, and would vastly improve the fun of playing a rogue in this video game. I very much don't like that sneak attacks don't work with my offhand, and I dislike needing to use a special attack in order to sneak attack.

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Having played a little of all the EA classes, I can say the rogue seems the hardest hit especially the Thief. Though admittedly I have not got ever class to level 3 yet.

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i know why they made disengage a option for everyone, because most 5e fights turn into slog fests of just hitting each other because moving around isnt worth the loss of attacks, however i think the rogues cunning action should be changed to give them an extra bonus action they can use for dash,hide or disengage. Leaving another bonus action to do all the other options larian added for bonus actions.

Also currently i dont think sneak attack applies when attacking with advantage when it should, which is probably whats currently making it feel so bad

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I had already commented on another topic but it's worth sharing it in here as it seems more informative.

Sneak attack simply doesn't trigger for me.
Checked on Astarion at lvl 4, attacking a target from hidden (so, having advantage) doesn't add the damage bonus.

Build v4.1.83.5246

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As a software engineer myself I'd bet that it's a trivial issue, like that the event "leaving hidden status" triggers before the damage and thus doesn't trigger the additional sneak damage.

Last edited by theCrius; 10/10/20 05:18 PM. Reason: mistakes
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I think sneak attack should be handled as a toggle ability like great weapon master, turn it on all attacks made will try to apply sneak attack dmg until one gets it if for some reason you want it to not apply like splitting your attack's up turn it off.

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Originally Posted by CaptainNetz
This is probably going to cause some controversy but disengage should not be a bonus action for everyone.


I disagree, that's not at all controversial. smile

On top of removing some of rogues uniqueness it removes one of the few mechanisms available to protect squishies by melee characters. If everything can bonus action disengage then there's little penalty for moving through even a well positioned blocker, where as you should really assume that most enemies have some sense of self preservation and normally won't do this. It's a bit of a conceit but it's pretty much the only tanking option innate to the mechanics.

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I'm trying out the Thief subclass and have found that the Second Story Work feature has been altered from tabletop to just be falling damage resistance instead of letting your dex mod boost your jumping ability and I'm not entirely sure why it would be like that considering the game already puts a focus on leaping around all over the place. Come on, let me be Spring Heeled Jack without having to be a wizard of some kind first.

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Originally Posted by CaptainNetz

To start of my sneak attack doesn't scale or at least as far as I have played. I am a level 4 rogue right now and the ability still says 1d6 for a sneak attack when normally it increases by another dice every odd level.


So it actually does scale the sneak attack damage by level but definitely not like the 5e handbook says to. If you mouse over the damage done in the message window after you use sneak attack, there will be two entries, one for the main attack, and one for the sneak attack damage. Here's a picture of the sneak attack damage calculation

https://prntscr.com/uwzo11

So instead of rolling multiple dice depedning on your rogue level, it rolls one d6 and then multiplies the result by a modifier equal to the number of sneak attack dice you should get based on the handbook at any given level. This is a really silly way to do it in my opinion and makes sneak attack damage much less consistent as your levels increase. Sometimes you'll hit like a truck (when you roll a 6, multiplied by the modifier) or you'll do close to nothing (roll a 1 multiplied by the modifier). I'd much rather them go by the 5e handbook for sneak attack damage to keep its damage much closer to a normal distribution rather than the current uniform distribution.

Last edited by WhatTheDeef; 11/10/20 05:18 AM. Reason: Don't know how to get image to show inline
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Originally Posted by WhatTheDeef
So instead of rolling multiple dice depedning on your rogue level, it rolls one d6 and then multiplies the result by a modifier equal to the number of sneak attack dice you should get based on the handbook at any given level. This is a really silly way to do it in my opinion and makes sneak attack damage much less consistent as your levels increase.
Good to know, but yeah, it should be fixed.

theCrius #688653 11/10/20 04:31 PM
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Originally Posted by theCrius
I had already commented on another topic but it's worth sharing it in here as it seems more informative.

Sneak attack simply doesn't trigger for me...


...As a software engineer myself I'd bet that it's a trivial issue, like that the event "leaving hidden status" triggers before the damage and thus doesn't trigger the additional sneak damage.


You are not the only one. I've never had it trigger. You'd think more people would have noticed this by now.

Edit: It isn't just leaving sneak. It does not trigger for any condition, including the prerequisite for another enemy of the target being within 1.5m



Last edited by Khiran; 11/10/20 04:51 PM.
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Sneak attack seems to fail more often than not and in situations where it should, i.e. an enemy is threatened by a teammate.

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The main trouble I have with applying sneak attack in melee is that moving out of the targets vision while staying close to reach the backstab zone, you often get reaction attacked, this wasn't a problem in divinity (that plays almost identically). I usually try to jump/disengage just to be sure not to get attacked, but even then if you click one pixel wrong your character might reposition before jumping and triggering an attack. Not to mention you just wasted a bonus action. This is quite frustrating.

I would also very much like the sneak attack to be automatically applied to the first attack that hits the enemy (that you have advantage vs of course), like so many others have asked for. Many times I've tried to offhand attack first but because of some UI delay I've accidentally done a normal attack forgoing my sneak attack for the turn.

I'm not sure how much many of you have played here but the combat would really be a nightmare without having jump as a bonus action, so many enemies teleport all over the place almost every turn. Removing jump as a bonus action would be a nightmare in several battles currently in the early access game. Have you fought the phase spiders? Dear lord.

Last edited by ultraulf; 12/10/20 01:11 AM.
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+1.

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Originally Posted by Kobolds when?
I'm trying out the Thief subclass and have found that the Second Story Work feature has been altered from tabletop to just be falling damage resistance instead of letting your dex mod boost your jumping ability and I'm not entirely sure why it would be like that considering the game already puts a focus on leaping around all over the place. Come on, let me be Spring Heeled Jack without having to be a wizard of some kind first.


Second Story Work never added your Dex mod to jumping? In 5E, Second Story Work lets you climb at full speed instead of half speed. Given that climbing in BG3 doesn't take up speed and can only be done on certain specific surfaces (which I entirely understand from a programming standpoint), the change to reducing falling damage seems like a pretty good call.

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Have to say I agree, it seems like allot of the rogues main "arsenal" has been taken from it, whether it be from how they want BG3 to play out or something else I'm not sure.

Which isn't a problem so long as something equivalently strong is put in its place. I dont really feel like that's been done, sure 2 bonus actions is cool for a thief, but to get that we lost so much. Sneak attack scaling, expertise, disengage as a bonus action being taken away as a special ability.

Needs to be abit more give and take than anything else, for example; I'd rather the sneak attack scaled than I got 2 Bonus actions, because that doesn't really punish the ranged rogue builds so many players typically do etc. Kinda forcing our hand into dual welding due to lack of other strong options.

This may all be just because it's EA, atleast I hope so.

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In DOS2 you could see that area for a backstab. In BG3 i didn't notice any visual effect to indicate that you were, or were not, in the correct position to do a sneak attack.
Maybe a diff attack icon so you know which targets you can sneak attack and which is only a normal attack .

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Absolutely agree with OP that disengage needs to be an action unless they have cunning action. It seems silly that my wizard can just hop away from any threat and then blast them with a spell.

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