Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Enviroment effects: They work for DOS but not D&D

You could've stopped here.


Complete non-sequitur. It's an internally coherent argument about the relevance of balance to cooperative games, increasing the complexity of the game does not negate either premise of the argument. You're begging the question.

AoO risk is mitigated by jumps which disengage you entirely which is a new invention as well and other risks can be mitigated in the usual way be it class abilities or consumables or positioning etc.

And while, yes, you have to idealize the fighter you will need to do the same for the caster in order to see the context in which an at-will cantrip is outperforming the fighter and see the break points involved. Then you can make adjustments be it discarding systems altogether or changing the numbers.

5E is balanced and biased towards certain things, it is not simply balanced, and it's always up to the DM to make adjustments to tilt the balance in whatever bias they are aiming for.

And please, by all means, post those broken multi classes you can find with just the PHB that's going to be on a WHOLE NEW LEVEL.

As far as I can tell the damage goes as follows: firebolt hits or misses dealing 1d6 or 0 damage, the area under the target is set on fire. The target receives the "Burning" condition, which deal 1d4 damage immediately, and one more time during the targets next turn, after which the "Burning" condition is gone. If the target moves through a fire surface the burning condition is re-applied. If the target does not move and stands still in a fire the "Burning" condition is not applied.

The enemies don't have to move through that burning area. If you managed to snipe 2 goblins standing next to each other - good on you, that feels good to me.




That assumption is based on the Fire Bolt cantrip, which says it deals 1d6 fire damage (at level 1-4), which I would assume is bumped up to 2d6 at level 5, following general 5e cantrip scaling. The 1d4 is not mentioned anywhere in the cantrip, but rather is tied to the "Burning" condition. Which I assume won't scale with levels, because it does not scale in DOS games.



My point is that 5e cantrips (apart from Eldritch Blast, which is why it is good) are weaker than multiattack. Because the more attack rolls you make the better. And having a tiny (1-2d4) in case of a miss isn't too much to completely break the game.

Yes, jumps and disengagement being conflated form a very silly mechanic. If used properly by the NPCs, it would completely distort the ruleset, as 5E uses chokepoints and AoOs in lieu of more modern solutions like taunting or hard CC as a primary mode of threat mitigation. Even as is, the conflation marginalizes Rogues, who should uniquely receive Disengage as a bonus action.

You hardly have to idealize Firebolt, it doesn't consume resources, can be used at the same range as most other spells in the game, there's a flammable surface in almost every fight, and even when there's not, castings, scrolls and bottles of Grease become both an AoE damage spell and CC, which is a pretty significant buff. It's pointless to consider these things in a vacuum with regard to breakpoints and outperformances, and far more useful to compare them to their tabletop counterparts, because cantrips and attack actions are embedded in a more complex system that is balanced around them. If you move one of those pieces, such as buffing Firebolt, all the other pieces are drawn along with it. As an example, I don't see Wizards losing a spell slot later on to service this early-game buff.

How about a single level dip in Fighter producing the Firebolt damage output we're talking about here at Level 2 while still being able to wield a shield for +2 AC, while the melee fighter being touted is swinging a 2-hander. A +2 AC advantage in the number-crunched 5th edition is a pretty sizeable buff.

It shows that balance is relevant to keep encounters interesting. In a PVP game, an encounter is between players and thus the balance of classes is what is important. In a game like solitaire, or any game where the enemy is not a player controlled character and all the classes are controlled by the player, the balance that matters is the balance against the environment. They are 2 different types of balance and your argument fails to show that you cannot balance a game against the environment by simply allowing the environment to also use the "broken toys."

What I will concede is that in an environment like that, if you balance solely around the top and not somewhere in between, it then becomes unplayable for those who only want to play with the bottom, but lets face it, even if the classes were perfectly balanced, they would not make a game which is challenging to people who are heavily invested into the combat because that would exclude the people who are bad at it. So yes, IMO a system with more depth, which is balanced around using surfaces to some degree (but not an extreme abuse case) is more interesting than a game with no surfaces at all.

And on the subject of world verisimilitude (in the event someone brings this up), how exactly is it believable that someone who can manipulate reality is "balanced" compared to someone who swings a sword. It isn't. In fact, it makes far more sense that a fighter is someone that is easily brushed aside by a caster. Surfaces are, in my opinion, far more "believable" than a wizard which is balanced in comparison to a fighter.

Disengage is not a new invention, combining it with jump is the only new thing there (which looks pretty stupid, but I digress). Also, at the current state of EA you don't really need an "idealized" caster to take down an idealized fighter, you could literally pull it off with three cantrips: Acid Splash to reduce their AC, Firebolt to set them on fire constantly, and Ray of Frost to knock them prone over and over. Is this an idealized caster? Of course not, it's just the simple and glaring issue that Larian made cantrips so OP that a caster can easily take down a fighter with the way they changed rules around. A cantrip that sets the enemy on fire even if it misses? That's free damage, no rolls even required. One that reduces AC just be making a giant pool of acid in an area? A free way to reduce AC, which is a HUGE deal. And finally one that knocks enemies prone more often than not, slows their movement range by 10 feet, and creates a rough terrain surface that can also knock them prone and reduces their speed yet again? Good grief, casters don't even need to use spell slots with these cantrips available. That's not even an exaggeration, I have gone through several combat encounters without even realizing that Gale (the companion wizard) had no spell slots left because his cantrips are so OP I almost never use regular spells.

I do not see anything resembling an argument for delineating balance against the environment from balance between players here. What makes another player distinct from an environment if both are bound by the rules of the game re: game theory?

Even if we argue case and not type, you are aware that hostile NPCs will have levels in character classes, correct?


I think maybe you've gotten confused. And the double negative is confusing me a bit here. But if I understand you correctly, and that's a pretty big if: This was not the intended purpose of the argument and I'm not sure how it's relevant here. I was demonstrating that balance - here meaning complexity or obfuscation of player means and goals such that all means approach equal purpose towards goals - is critical to the design of cooperative experiences.

From every single experience I've had with my numerous uses of Firebolt thus far, it ticks a lot more. Firebolt misses and still applies burning (on an attack that should have done literally nothing to the enemy), which is 1d4 damage right away, then at the start of their turn it ticks off another 1d4 damage, then they take yet another 1d4 damage whether they move out of the fire surface or not. In fact, depending on the size of the fire surface, I've seen it tick off 2 or 3 times just from the surface alone. And burning does not go away after that one turn as far as I can tell, it stays for at least 2 turns. Meaning that, if you get really lucky on the burn damage rolls, you can get a max of 12 damage just from those 3 burn damage ticks which is more than the 1d10 damage firebolt has in the 5e ruleset, not even taking into account the 1d6 damage it can cause if it hits. That's pretty OP.

Not to mention, burning and fire surfaces completely ignore AC, meaning it's not a hit or miss on damaging the enemy, it will always damage them no matter how high their AC is. The way this is set up right now basically means that the way to win literally any fight in the EA is to just toss out a bunch of grease or flammable barrels, and then use a single firebolt. No more moves needed, you win with your giant lake of fire. Or if you feel inclined to watch your warrior hack people to pieces, just make a bunch of acid areas and watch them go to work on their now significantly easier to hit targets. Wanna watch people slip and fall prone constantly? Get some water or blood and hit it with a Ray of Frost.

The point here is cantrips have been made stupidly OP for no reason whatsoever. The firebolt cantrip could be fixed by removing the fire surface and making it only tick off burn damage at the start of the burning persons turn, not instantly as well. The Ray of Frost cantrip can be fixed by removing it's ability to just knock people prone flat out, and either removing the ice surface or making it so the ice surface doesn't have a chance to knock people prone either. Having it slow them down on top of creating a rough terrain area which slows them down as full is already pretty powerful. Acid Splash...well that one just needs to be converted back to the proper 5e format entirely, reducing AC is a huge buff. Ideally, cantrips shouldn't create surface effects at all because anything that just straight up ignores AC, no matter how little damage it causes, is OP. Sure maybe it only causes 2 damage per burn tick reliably, but literally all you have to do then is make a big area of fire between you and the enemy and those tiny little burns will stack up until they die without you ever having to even target the enemy directly.

I'd like you to familiarize yourself with Concentration and how important it is in 5e and then re-evaluate how sane Firebolt doing 2 to 4 ticks of damage is

Why would you ever cast a wall spell when Fireball, already the most powerful effect in the game for its resource cost, also does continuous burn damage?

Maybe the most powerful spell in the game shouldn't be more powerful?

I'm noticing a really common beat from the Divinity fans who are newer to D&D in these threads. They seem to be unaware of how tightly tuned 5E was, or why it's that way.

5E was extensively playtested, and things like action economy, AC, concentration, spell utility on cantrips, were all very carefully tuned to address a number of issues that 3E had, and they were so carefully tuned because the edition before it, 4E, was widely regarded as an embarrassing step in the wrong direction. Hot off the heels of failure in the eyes of the core fan, 5E easily represents the most thoroughly designed, logically coherent, and statistically validated edition of D&D to date by orders of magnitude. The inclusion of keywords, the use of balance matrices, the D&D Next qualitative feedback reviews all shine through in the precision of the wording and the crunching of formerly wild systems down to manageable levels (and good riddance to DC 80 checks.) The elements of the systems D&D fans are upset about here are lynchpins to the overall balance of the game as levels progress. If strange disparities in power and balance are arising at level 1-4, they will only spin out to make later level balance pretty wacky, to put it gently.

Let's take the -2 to AC from the acid surface, doesn't seem like a big deal, right? Well keep in mind that an Ancient Red Dragon in 5E has an AC of 22. This is because of a design doctrine often referred to as "bounded accuracy" which boils down to "your to-hit and AC won't increase much as you level up," or "bonuses to AC and to-hit should be rare." But now you have a cantrip which leaves behind a surface that reduces one of the toughest monsters in the game's AC by 10%. And you're learning it at level 1.

Common, a flask of oil can cause 10 damage over 2 turns no concentration required. If you had a lit torch in your can argue that you can throw it as a free interaction, if not your friendly wizard can do that dealing a 1d10 damage plus the oil.
Is it shorter range, yes, does it cost resources - a paltry sum. Is it an example of persistent damage that does not require concentration.

There are a different set of meta rules which govern the environment vs those which govern players. In a 1v1 PVP game, it is normally the case that everyone starts on equal footing and the differentiating factor is player skill, or, in the case where balance is bad, the skewed balance. BG3 is not analogous to a 1v1 PVP game, because you control multiple characters. In BG 3, not only is it not the case that everyone starts off on equal footing (NPCs have items already, the player only has what they find and the player almost always has an information advantage) but there are also other very clear differences, for example, the players are limited to a party size of 4, where as the AI is limited by how many enemies the developers decide to throw at you. The Goblin camp is a nice example of some 20 something enemies that illustrates this.

Even if we ignored those differences however and there was actually a PVP mode, played between 1 group of 4 players and another, it would still not be analogous to a 1v1 PVP game and then, the closest comparison would be team based PVP games. Are classes in team based PVP games balanced 1:1 against each other? Not really, no. Those types of games use the Rock:Paper:Scissors mode of balance, where class A beats Class B, Class B beats Class C and Class C beats class A. In these cases, the system as a whole is seen as in balance even if individual parts are not. This type of balance is much closer to something which could be fairly applied to 5e and even then, you are obviously going to have a situation where some classes will beat others in a matchup, but across the system as a whole are balanced.

If we ask the question, "is balance good," the answer is, in my opinion, it depends what you sacrifice to achieve balance. Imo it is fine to have a slightly out of balanced system, provided it makes for more enjoyable gameplay. Obviously, fun is subjective, so that comes down to player preference, but there are some things which surfaces very clearly do add to the gameplay. For example.

• Opportunity cost of deciding whether you want to remove the surface or leave it there.
• Restricting movement.
• Adding interesting elemental interactions (the whole cloud thing div 2 had).
• Rewarding clever gameplay (being creative with the surfaces).

It also obviously has the following downsides.

• When its always easier to apply a surface than it is to remove it, the opportunity cost is pretty much gone because the best solution is always, "live with it." To avoid this, the relative ease of applying a surface needs to match the ease of removing it (for example, a free action "douse" which would put out a flame on the character and a small space surrounding them would be roughly equal to the ease of the cantrip).
• It messes with balance.

I am a fan of surfaces because of those first 4 points there and I can live with the 2nd negative, the 1st negative is the one which is imo more important because it counters the 4 points that I mentioned above. This was a problem in DOS 2 because of Necrofire (an ooze just needed to move around to apply it, but it took 2 spells to remove it).

Now I need to have a party with multiple people who can cast Acid Splash to test if the Acid Pools stack. Let me figure out combat log work and go test. If it does stack, best party is 4 people who can cast cantrips.

+1 the floor stuff was cool in div but not in this i cant just use rain to make fire go away for example. fireball shoudl just be 1d8 like in og dnd and ignore the aoe

Even without it stacking, if you have at least 2 people who can cast it you can just make a decently large acid area to keep creatures constantly in it so the AC reduction doesn't wear off. Also, if it's effect increases as you level up like other cantrips do, we could end up with a starter cantrip that strips away a stupid amount of AC from enemies without even costing a spell slot.

What D&D are you playing where fireball was a single d8 damage dice and wasn't an AoE spell? That would make it weaker than the Firebolt cantrip in base 5e rules o.o

i see someone complaining against sufaces, i give them post +1

Yes, I am in the camp that some cantrips are over powered as is in BG3. If they add Magic Initiate Feat I can see all Martial classes grabbing it so they can have Acid Splash and Fire Bolt or Ray of Frost. I have to think what 1st level spell would be best to go with that.

Just going Eldritch Knight and having Gale in the party already gives my party a whole lot of fire to play with, adding acid to it just seems unfair lol