Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Baldur’s Gate 3 – Homebrew Rules breaking Spell Slots & Action Economy

I suspect the HP changes in your example may have been made independently of the AC changes. If you look at the example I gave in my post, those goblins all have MM HP, but they still have lowered AC, which technically means they were nerfed in comparison to the MM. A possible other reason then for the higher HP which may make more sense in the context, is larian wanted to have a fight that only had a few combatants, but those few combatants are more challenging to the player. They could have just picked some other enemy in the MM which fit the description and achieved the same result, but I guess for the sake of the story they went with goblins and this disagreement over monster HP is the result.


Yeah, I understand you are upset about spell efficiency and in the case of Advantage and Surfaces, there upset is probably justified. I do think the HP bloat discussion though is upset which has been misplaced. If you look at that Goblin Camp above, sleep there would be more or less as useful as it is intended to be as per the rules. If those examples you have given over there had instead been say bugbears with 27 hp, would you still be complaining? My point being, for the purposes of the narrative here, they wanted to use a specific enemy type (Goblins), but for the kind of encounter they wanted to present, they needed a different stat block, so they adjusted it to suit the encounter. There are still encounters elsewhere, where sleep is hypothetically as useful as it would be per the rules, but that encounter is not intended to be 1.

This particular HP adjustment to fit the narrative, does not seem to be an issue to me. It is not like every single fight in the game is adjusted, or that they are adjusting them at random, it seems to be based on the type of encounter they are trying to present. The encounters do not feel bloated. A GM at a tabletop would do something similar if it fit within their narrative and the original baldur's gate games did the same thing when the situation demanded it, the developers said as much. The majority of enemies in Throne of Bhaal had their statistics modified for that matter, because stat tables for enemies were not built with epic level adventures in mind.


I guess its a difference of expectations. I was expecting there to be rule changes, in fact, I am expecting that the majority of rule changes that would be made, would be made prior to players getting a hold of the game in the EA to test. Why is this? Well, it is because of expectations. The lead developer of Path of Exile gave a very good talk on this at one point, he said, when you design a game a certain way and players start to play it, it instills in them a certain expectation that this is what they are going to get out of the final product and there will be a large amount of resistance to change away from that.

In the speech he gave an example of this. In Path of Exile, when you enter a town, you automatically refill your flasks. This is not how he intended for flasks to work. In his original vision of the game, when you entered a town, you would have to go to an NPC to refill your flasks. In the beta for the game, they implemented this as a "quick solution" because they wanted to test the flask mechanics, but didn't have the NPC ready yet. They are now in a state however, that if they would ever implement flasks as they had originally intended it would cause massive uproar, even though if that had been how flasks had initially been implemented, there likely would have been no complaining at all as to players, that is how it had always worked.

This is, incidentally, why you are very resistant to changes to the 5e rules, because your expectation is that it follows those rules. Larian is trying to cater to more than 1 audience however and they only have 1 chance to make that first impression. This means that if they want to make changes (which it is clear that they do) it is in their best interest to make as many of the changes they want as possible before we get a hold of the game to play, because it means we won't have any previous expectations of what the game was like before those changes were made clouding our view.



Yes, I have thought a lot about how I would want games to be, but over time I have come to accept that unless I personally make the game I want to play, I will never get to play it. Everyone has their own vision of a perfect game and from person to person, this game will differ, either slightly, or very drastically indeed. I could describe to you the game I want to play, it does not resemble any game that currently exists on the market. So instead, I try to appreciate other people's vision of the game they want to play, rather than force them to try and make mine.

Just a +1 to OP and I hope you are also sending via the feedback link. Let's hope the devs listen and we get to option to play with D&D rules.

If you look at the spells I just pulled from a few of my players, the differences in spells aren't really in damage. I circled the things in purple that are consistently different. Now, Clerics and Warlock (limited spells) are the truest casters in the game. The wizard needs some work. You talk about big damage but the wizards really don't have it because if you are talking % of total enemy health per round relative to a 5e game, they are doing significantly less than your normal caster due to the nature of the encounter. Spiritual weapon, Tashas, Toll the dead, Spike growth, Spare the dying, Absorb elements, SHIELD, and sanctuary are spells that drastically change not only the DPR, but the shutdown for movement (spike growth), and advantage (tashas). This is a difficult conversation to have considering some of the most commonly chosen and used spells are missing from the book. Casters doing damage is nice, but there are other ways to guarantee SOME damage - spiritual weapon and spike growth especially are crazy good to just throw out there and now you have a spell that is pretty much guaranteed to succeed. Things like Tasha's are such a staple because of the prone condition that they have to *continue to save on* (without making an ice patch your own team can eat shit on).

And the point, again, is combined with HP bloat that line of "Take out a single enemy" is no longer an accurate statement.





Cant sleep in the middle of a 7 round fight, now sure where you are getting Null & Void from.




Half the time "tactics" means climbing up a rope or a ladder, burning it so the melee cant get to you and hiding out of LOS and just dumping arrows and firebolts and then dodging out of LOS again until they die. I wouldn't call it particularly clever, its holing up repeatedly so you don't get burned down and you save your spells for when you need it instead of using spells because they might work. The round economy breaks the 3 round fight and spell slot usage because of how long it takes to decrease enemy DPR from HP bloat. So, what do you do, you give as much advantage to martials as you can because they're the ones who are going to consistently hit and do damage. Its way better to empower them than blow 3 2nd level MMs for 12 damage on a creature that has 25hp instead of 10. Now you'll knock them down with ice and let that martial go to town. Thats the economy change that starts coming down the pipe because of the matrix. Again, this game does not play like D&D. You dont use the same spells in the same way for the same reason. You position martials and casters differently than you would. You are playing on a retreating action consistently and its dropping the "5e players are impossibly strong" theme that DMs run into time and time again. 5e favors the player significantly, and this is definitely not.

Well Sharp, no one is complaining about weapon skills. In fact, I really liked them and they could be recharged every short rest instead of long rests.

Now, that we have a less attacking debate, can we at least agree that from the client perspective my post is reasonable?

Regarding PoE, GGG is the company in the world who most get out of clients feedbacks. But we’re talking about different game scenario, where the meta must be changed every single update for the sake of the diversity. It’s not a game “sold” based in known rules.
If Larian was 10% of what GGG is in terms of client orientation we would have a better game, I guess.

At no point did I make this claim, so lets dismiss that assumption shall we?


I claimed that firstly, if you wanted to roll the HP of every single enemy in the game using a computer, you could and it would not slow down gameplay at all. BG 3 does not do this, the HP of Goblins appears to be fixed, but the values are fixed within an acceptable bracket and were probably intentionally chosen for the type of encounter they are trying to present. Most Goblins have low HP, with a few (4?) bosses going into the high 20's and low 30s. For HP bloat to even be a discussion, you need to define what you mean by HP bloat. If by HP bloat you mean, "any deviation away from the number 7," great, but that is not helping anyone, is being disingenuous and is completely overlooking what it means to design an encounter to begin with. These encounters do take 2-3 turns when played, I know this because I have done them, more than once. Furthermore, they do not "feel bloated" at all.

You claimed it is overlooking what it means to design and encounter to begin with. Explain this to me, as it seems like you have some definition I don't have access to. You keep dismissing arguments with vague hand gestures saying "those numbers and math you did are disingenuous". Yeah, how?

You saying it doesn't "Feel bloated" is useless. This is a math equation. Feelings don't matter. Explain your position using mechanics and math.

Strawman Argument: "Any deviation from 7". No one said its a deviation from 7. You are inventing dumb arguments and then arguing against them. Don't do that. My definition: If it is double the MM or more. What is your definition?

All you do is take potshots without using mechanics, math, definitions, or anything concrete. You have a lot of feelings and, while its good to know the game is evocative, those are all either unfounded or unusable pieces of information. Justify what they are doing other than "I played da game a few times". Cool, me too. To the tune of 280 hours so far. So playing the game obviously isn't an influencing factor here because the numbers don't change. Make a real argument or stop potshotting a bunch of bullshit and pulling every invalid argument and fallacy you can make when having an adult discussion where people actually what to find the truth and don't have emotional investment in the outcome. Theres an ad hominem for you

I think you would be surprised at what GGG would do, if they were the ones making BG 3. I have played PoE since its open beta and followed its news very actively, ever since then. Sure, they do listen to feedback, when they believe the feedback aligns with their vision of what they want the game to be. Here are some topics that the community has been vocally asking for, for years, which they are not only unmoved on, but they have outright said they will never change because it does not align with their vision of what they want the game to be.

• PoE does not have an auction house. Players want an auction house. The developers have said, they will never add an auction house. Here is the trade manifesto for example, which illustrates this.
• Players want items to be easier to pick up. They want loot vacuums to suck in items that are around them. This is another example of something which the developers consider a core pillar of Path of Exile and have said would never change.
• Just recently (as of Harvest League) there was a massive outcry about players wanting deterministic crafting. Deterministic crafting goes against the core pillar that powerful items are hard to obtain and as of such, it is not going to happen.

I could go on and on and on, but the point is, there are a number of topics where there is a very vocal part of the community that wants a change, where the developers have said, it will never happen. I suspect that if they were the ones making BG 3, the result may be very similar, if not the same. They may be more active when talking to the community and they may write very long manifestos explaining why they are not willing to budge on a particular topic, but do not for one moment believe that this means that they implement every change which is popular within the community.

Mr Sharp,


As you I'm an old school player of PoE.


• PoE does not have an auction house. Players want an auction house. The developers have said, they will never add an auction house. Here is the trade manifesto for example, which illustrates this.
• Players want items to be easier to pick up. They want loot vacuums to suck in items that are around them. This is another example of something which the developers consider a core pillar of Path of Exile and have said would never change.
• Just recently (as of Harvest League) there was a massive outcry about players wanting deterministic crafting. Deterministic crafting goes against the core pillar that powerful items are hard to obtain and as of such, it is not going to happen.

Not altering 3 things (which I'd hate to have them changed the way they are right now because the game is supposed to be hardcore) when they've done hundreds of thousand other ajustments based in a client base is simply the worst argument in the world possible to justify yours concerning BG3.

Those 3 comments you've posted are like asking Pokemon to remove the Pokeballs. Asking Street Fighter to remove Ryu. Asking Dota 2 to be turn based and so on and so forth.

Why the hell is that comparable to ask a DnD5e game based to CARE about spell balance? lol

BG3 would get so much out of POE

Economy to begin with. Law of Scarcity in economics were perfectly implemented in that game. Scarcity is not a BG3 thing

There has been plenty of whining due to not sticking to the number 7 which has been arbitrarily chosen because it is the midpoint between 2 and 12, that was why I mentioned it. I did not expect you to realistically use it as an argument, I mentioned it because I wanted you to actually define something useful so that a debate can actually productively occur.



The maximum HP roll for a Goblin is 12. So if I double this, a Goblin with 24 or more HP constitutes as bloated? There are a sum total of 4 Goblins in the EA which has more than 24 HP and all of them are bosses, which are very clearly designed to be a boss encounter and they each have custom gear. I could go on and on about this, but defining a fixed amount of HP as being bloated is actually a meaningless metric, because an appropriate amount of HP depends on the party itself. If you have a level 20 party and for some reason you want to run a Goblin against them, you could come up with a plot where there is some archmage who magically enchanted a Goblin and made it far more dangerous than its ordinary brethren. The point being, given the circumstances, a foe will or will not feel bloated relative to the party. You do however, give another useful metric further down of 2-3 turns, which I will use as a definition, because its actually a meaningful tool of measurement and can be used as a gauge independent of party level.



Debates are done based on definitions, unless you define HP bloat to mean something, it is a vague and meaningless term and there is no point to arguing over it. How much HP is too much? For now, I will take your definition of a "non bloated" encounter to be 2-3 turns, although I could also use, "double the MM" as your definition but since very few enemies have actually got more than double the MM's stats and all of those who do have justifiable reasons for being that way, I see it as not much of an argument to begin with.



I gave numbers further up in that screenshot. I even gave numbers before that, showing how on average Goblins will die in a single hit, but ok, let me make it easy for you, since apparently connecting the dots is a little bit challenging for you. In that screenshot above there are 16 Goblins with a total HP of 188 and an average HP of 11.75 (which is below the maximum roll of 12 for a Goblin). All of them have 12 AC. Shatter does 3d8 damage. If you are looking at probability, there is a 68.35% chance that shatter will roll for 12 or higher. Most of the Goblins in that screenshot however, have 10 HP. If you adjust for that, it is an 83.59% chance of landing for 10 or higher. From experience, these Goblins have a habit of climbing up that structure on the left, clustering there and firing arrows down on your party. You can realistically expect to have quite a few Goblins within the AoE, so at minimum you can expect it to hit lets say 4 Goblins and at the very least 1 of them will die, while the rest will be injured.

Then lets look at the rest of the party members. Well, in that screenshot above, you have a Fighter wielding a greatsword, which, after accounting for all modifiers, deals 2d6+5 damage excluding superiority die as well as the dipping mechanic. 12 HP goblins, on hit die 58.33% of the time. Against the 10 HP Goblins, 83.33% of the time. I could go on with examples for the rogue and priest, but you get the idea. You can reasonably expect 4-5 enemies to die every single round in that example above, if you account for finishing off partially wounded enemies due to enemies which were not killed but wounded by shatter. Well, what about parties that don't have a wizard or a warlock who has shatter? Well, your warrior may have cleave, but you might also be playing say for example a PC light cleric and have access to tools like the light domain channel divinity power which has a very big AoE and could realistically hit 10 or so of those Goblins for over 2d10 damage.

The point being, there are lots of tools, in this specific example, which make this encounter not only manageable without resorting to things like dip or the additional advantage rules, but actually rather easy. If you ignore every single 1 of Larian's extra rules, you can end it within 4-5 turns. But wait, you might argue, this falls outside of the expected 2-3 turns! Well the thing is, unless you run through the entire camp like I did, you will only be engaging 7-8 of them at a time. This significantly lowers that "4-5" and basically cuts the encounter in half. Tell me, if a player at your table went charging into a war camp of enemies and made a big mess of himself, pulling them all onto the party at once, would you not be fine with this being either a party wipe, or an encounter that extends beyond your, "2-3 turns?"

But now, instead of looking at the resolution of the encounter, let us look at the encounter itself and see what we can conclude about it. Does it take overly long to resolve? In terms of time, because there are so many combatants moving, it does have the potential to take a long time to resolve. This is not because the player will spend much time actually doing anything, but because an option does not exist to skip the movement animations of combatants, which is something which should clearly be implemented. In terms of actual combat however? If you define an encounter as, "something which should take 2-3 actions on the part of each combatant to resolve," then this can easily fall within that. Especially if you don't go completely mad like I did and attack every single goblin at once.

Obviously however, the number of turns an encounter takes is dependent on the party, a more experienced party can end an encounter much quicker than a less experienced party. Larian is "GMing" for 100's of thousands of different party types at once and they cannot customize the experience to all of them at the same time, but they can (and probably will) offer different difficulty tiers, to somewhat allow players to customize the difficulty to their liking. The question is, can these encounters (without resorting to the "rules" like dip) be ended within your expected timeframe of 2-3 turns and the answer to that question is a definite yes.

Seriously... the difficulty settings haven't been implemented yet. They are coming.

Divinity 2


Baldur's Gate EE

Can you see the differences in difficulty level settings of BG2 compared to dos?

In BG 3 If you increase the HP or Ac without raising at the same time attribute modifiers you’re clearly going to unbalanced the classes. That’s my main argument to begin with. Please, read the post to understand it. Difficulty level is not debated there. The game looks easy to me as it is right now. That’s not the subject of this thread. Come on guys, you can do better than that...

Seriously...

Can you explain, in detail, precisely how different difficulty settings in BG 3 will change gameplay?

Of course you can't, because you don't know. I'm pretty sure that not even Larian knows what different difficulty settings will and will not change at this point.

Your position is essentially "stop complaining, I'm sure it will be fixed in the final release", based on absolutely no information and not even any public indication from Larian of the direction they intend to go with the game and difficulty settings. There's no point in us playing EA if we're supposed to shut up about anything we don't like and wait for the full game.

Guys, for those who like the game storywise and lorewise, this post is all about bringing meaningful subjects that will turn the game better as a whole diving deep into the battling system. We are NOT sabotaging the game by saying it would feel more reasonable to have some changes here and there.
Everyone in this community wants the game to succeed. You know why Larian launched both of the DOS with enhanced editions? Because the game wasn’t polished enough in the final release.

I’ll ask again for those who are coming here and distilling poison: have you tried to read the post? Do you understood it? You came here with the intention to know what is being debated here? What is your opinion about the subject? How are your feedbacks contributing to the game besides points bugs?

ok...again. 7 comes up because if you are a DM when you use creature sheets, it says "7(2d6)". The HP is 7. There is no minimum and no maximum. Their HP is 7. Thats it. End of story. Goblins have 7hp. Young reds have 178. Thats it, end of story, no questions. You don't roll 17d10 and maybe end up with a 255hp dragon. You fight against a young dragon with 178 hp. There is no range, ever. They have what they have. So saying 12 could be doubled to 24 on a max rolled goblin - there is no maxed roll goblin. There are goblins - they have 7 hp. A DM might custom tailor an encounter or a particular tribe, or whatever but that is a DM being very comfortable with the game mechanics and THAT SPECIFIC PARTY to say "they can handle this"or "this would be a shit stomp, lets bump gobbo attack to +5 and increase AC by 1 and add 5hp". You need to know how the math works on that. This is math. You can't just do it and be like "yeah im pretty sure any party of 4, regardless of configuration, should be good with this". The game just doesn't work like that. If you look at rollable encounters for a level 4 party:

Two winged kobolds, one drake (This is from Hoard of the Dragon Queen)



Field HP = 114. Drake resistant to weapons = 214 hp effective, 3 targets.

For a party of 5 level 4s, you are running into 114hp with a 55% hit chance from kobolds doing 6 damage - so 6 a round. Pack Tactics makes that 90+% so we call that 10 around from the kobolds. A drake doing a 70% chance to hit on bite at at 10 + con save 75% chance to save 5 poison and disadvantage as well as the 55% chance to hit tail doing 6. So about 12DPR from that. Total of 22 DPR. AC 13 on kobolds means that first round theyre probably both dead but knocked out 10 damage. You can play them ranged and send in the drake for a round and add another 12 before players take them out. So you rotate into round 2 with ranged another 22. 44 damage in 2 rounds now. Kobolds drop we're back to doing 12DPR on a drake with 200hp. 5 level 4s at 45hp on the high which puts them at roughly 200 hp across 5 targets. Well we just took 1 almost out of the fight in 2 rounds with only 3 creatures. Add 2 more winged creatures and on is definitely down and on lost saves because they keep targeting them.

Players go - Barbarian, makes 1 +6 (55% chance to hit) with a greataxe - 1d12+4 (with 18 str). 10 damage reduced to 5, so 2.5DPR. Rogue goes, dual wielding short swords. +5 to attack (55%) for 1d6+3 (6) and sneak attack 2d6 (6) = 12/2 is 6 plus another 55% chance with 3 on 1d6 because no dual wield feat, reduced to 1 = 7/2 3 DPR. We'll just say that average is going to work for a ranger as well and then we have a cleric and a wizard. 2d6 force on cleric for spiritual weapon is 6 at 55% = 3, not reduced force damage and a wizard is probably going to use either catapult, mm, or a chill touch/toll the dead. So, now you are added 6 average.

Add all of that up and you get 2.5 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 6 = 18 DPR v the 12 of the drake, each at 200hp. 5 rounds doing average but rogues exist and you might get 32 total on a crit from a sneak attacking that changes life significantly. Having poisoned PCs attacking at disadvantage levels the DPR. We all know dice exist and there are clever things to do so that moves the 5 rounds of the averages only taking everyone to 0 and moves it to about 3 with some healing done. Lo and behold, a 3/4 round fight that was 3 creatures and still a challenge.

But, like I said, 10 goblins with 45% doing 5 damage so 2DPR is 20DPR. Lethal to a level 5 party.

I don't know how you got killing 4+ of them a round?



Fighter gets 1 hit, so even if its for literally infinite damage, just one dies. Also ON HIT, hes hitting 60% of the time. 40% of that time on a 12hp goblin, it doesn't die. You have 3 other people who do less damage - barring a rogue - and they are *certainly* not killing one a round. So the concept of killing 4+ is right out, and youll be lucky to get 2 based on the math for hitting their AC and the average DPR. So, the math doesn't jive beyond what I said above regarding 10 with 2 dropping a round, I haven't seen anything that changes that. If you want to take a video of you starting a fight against 10 goblins and without cheesing the absolute shit out of it, kill 4 a round. The numbers you posted for Shatter and Channel divinity are, again, for that particular configuration and they still have a surprisingly good save rate against it so assume max 75% of the damage on the board and thats if they havent already taken your wizard out and the cleric is spending the entire fight healing people and casting aid.

While, yes, its possible, and I can do it, it also requires a fair amount of optimization and cheesing. Want to run two wizards because you are on and you like gale? Well, good luck! So while having to be challenging for the hardest core min-maxed 4 PC MP game and also give something beatable to "WTF is a D&D lol?" player is difficult, the way you simplify it is reduce headcount. Bodies means DPR, flat out. If you are using utility spells, lockdowns, CC, it falls apart when you realize that holding 1/10 of the force in Hold Person was silly, its meaningless based on what their output as a collective is still. There are no real "impact" spells because the round length and crowded fields. So, what do you do? You make encounters like the ones that come as rollable encounters from the D&D modules that have a hell of a lot more playtesting behind them than this. 4 goblins with 2 pet drakes? Wow, crazy ass fight. Locking down a drake is a HUGE DEAL now. Casters and Druids, when they get introduced, are being neutered by the spam. So, what do you do? Give the dual wielding martial classes a bunch of buffs and push around the scatter a bit so they aren't getting attacked so much and roll until a side is dead.

The tactics being used right now are to reduce the effect of the HP and headcount on the field. They are not things you do in D&D. You think what ability would do the most interesting thing and tilt this. No one runs and finds a doorway or a ladder in D&D. That just isn't in the DNA. They saw a 3D world and decided to use that battle map as an excuse to litter the world with bodies. I think the most true-to-D&D encounters in the game currently are the madcaps, bulette (although its jump aoe damage is bullshit), and minotaurs.

Beginner DMs make the mistake of thinking an epic battle is an army coming after you and when its 45 minutes a round and everyone is bored to tears you learn to not do that anymore. Get some tough things in there, drop that headcount, and make spells and abilities matter because youre taking out a larger percentage of their round DPR by holding, sickening, weakening, or knocking down something while granting your martials some advantages and areas for them to take advantage of the chaos and chip damage youre creating so that 1 swing WILL kill something.

Long fights always favor martial classes, pick a game with expendable resources, that is a true statement. What the point of this is with the spread, bloat, and duration decreasing the effective DPR of casters, it relegates them to cheerleaders instead of battlefield manipulators. You dont use a 2nd level spell slot on X spell because if it hits it wont kill them. you may as well have done 0 damage if its got 1hp left because next round it has the same DPR. That 1-5hp grace period they keep getting left with essentially adds another enemy in for another round that wouldn't have been there otherwise. So the spell that kills just hurts now and martial is cleanup, or you waste a turn using firebolt to kill some asshole with 1hp left, AGAIN.

If you want to say BG3 EA current selection of utility spells is a bit lacking I can agree with that, but the wizard class causing big amounts of damage is in the game. Stuff like scortching ray (especially when coupled with hex, and yes, you can have both as a wizard) does ton of damage for example (read 40+ danage). Stuff like thunderwave when correctly applied (i.e. when you position yourself so you can throw several opponents down a cliff...) is deadly. No martial character can hope do do the same in early game (barring lucky criticals and potions of speed which are way more unreliable than casting a spell with right positioning) or to give the party the same utility. So yes you can easily take down single enemies of even groups of them with spells in BG3 EA but it requires you to plan your moves carefully, luring them where you can hurt them the most. Also... Tasha is in the game already.



Yes but you can sleep right afterwards and recharge everything, have another encounter, go nova again, then sleep and so on, that way your caster doesn't need to manage resources at all. As a DM I can tell you that resource management and recomended number of encounters per day are basically the of the main ways used to ballance caster classes compared to martial classes.



I destroyed a ladder the grand total of once (in the Zhent hideout to be precise). The most bloated and unfun fights I had in BG3 were in the goblin camp after I killed the 3 leaders and that's not because it was a difficult fight. It was actually pretty easy as I used my casters and archers to get rid of lower hp enemies (a lot of them with 12 hps so killing them in one hit with spells or sneak attack was not a problem), the problem was the time it took for the thing to end when the outcome was never really in doubt. As for your final lines... you are making a lot of assumptions about D&D. Yes, PCs are supposed to be powerful but depending on the group playstyle and level of experience they are not guaranteed to just walk around winning every fight, I for one don't DM the game that way although I also try to refrain from killing PCs due to sheer bad luck (on the other hand I'm the kind of DM who believes actions have consequences, if you do something utterly stupid in one of my games you are probably going to pay a price for it). If all I threw my players were easy encounters designed to make them feel great about themselves they would just ask me for more challenging encounters. And again the recomended number of encounters in D&D 5th edition is 6-8 encounters per day!

Edit: forgot to mention that currently wizards can learn any spell in the game, cleric spells included. This is wrong and needs to change imo but it certainly gives wizards a lot of utility they don't usually have at their disposal, especially not early on.

Kind of wonder where you get these percents at for advantage/disadvantage. I could be wrong but isn't the rule roll a additional d20 an high goes to advantage an low goes to disadvantage. If you have both it's nullified except for halflings that can reroll 1s.

If this is the case bless an the other spell will have more value than you say since the percent is not 100% accurate.

Thanks for the detailed and well elucidated write-up. I don't know the in-depth rules of DnD 5e, but even as a casual player, I've found that my play style has been narrowed down to:

1. sneak my way up to somewhere high above the enemies
2. Astarion sneak attacks with bow
3. the whole party then rains arrows/cantrips down on the enemies
4. profit

I don't even care about team composition and whether certain spells can complement certain strategies, because they all pale in comparison to what getting a height advantage can get you. Even Shadowheart with a crossbow is a pretty decent shot with height advantage and the target is not obscured in shadows. And if an enemy does get close, it's so easy to disengage and jump behind the enemy to backstab. Gaining Advantage this way is so powerful and easy that the part of DnD that encourages the interplay of different class spells and abilities is being left by the wayside as I make my way through the game.

So the effect this has on my gameplay is that casting support spells aren't as useful as direct damage spells when cast from a height advantage. Astarion is incredibly powerful since he has so many ways of gaining Advantage, either from height or from jumping and then backstabbing. He doesn't need any spells from the party to help him, other than an occasional heal.

It could very well be the case that this kind of gameplay is what Larian wants us to have, but DnD combat is much more than merely sneaking up a ladder and then raining down arrows/bolts/cantrips, no?

its save at turn start, unfortunately (guessing bug), and I don't think you can start with it as a wizard during character creation...maybe I missed it, but I didn't see a way to get it like a goolock or anything.



It was more that the resource drain in during the fights, not that by the third one you are drained. We will target the gobbo fight, specifically, because its tedious and annoying to restart if you end up having to. Parties aren't meant to do with 2 encounters at once, it isn't a linear scale of "well if we add twice the people and 1 encounter takes half, the double should use all". The enemy DPR kicks up and wipes you out, you just cant mitigate it with a certain headcount because of how many people spells at that level affect.



My party is level 8 in Avernus and they are going to walk into a room thats 50' high and 100' wide (circular). 2 Erinyes that can polymorph into giant spiders, 2 phase spiders, a shadow demon, and a fomorian. The place is littered in webs that will halve the speed and the room is hot and gives them a level of exhaustion every 2 rounds on a failed DC12 Con Save. I don't really run easy fights haha. The 2 chain devils riding wyverns and dropping them from 200 feet after they were taking crush damage was a rough one, just some random encounter. By powerful I mean a fully charged party focusing on one thing is powerful. I ran tomb of annihilation. 5 level 10s almost killed a CR23 Lich AFTER fighting something that was a DC19 con save to not because exhausted every round and that thing had 250 hp of its own. Lich had power word kill, maze, all sorts of nasty shit. The way the map is though, he cant really move around. Thats crazy though. It why all bosses have escape, legendary, or minions because players will annihilate solos. That is the issue though is for every head you put onto the initiative tracker, that power gets more and more and more diffused. It should be a battle of skills, spells, and being clever. At a certain point a large number of individually mediocre enemies A. Isn't fun B. removes utility from a lot of abilities and spells as it just doesn't accomplish much. 100 skeleton? You thunderwave and kill 10. 90 left. Cool spell?

This is up to DMs and players as to what they enjoy, of course, but I have found over the years that a spell landing or an ability sticking having a marked effect on the field is a lot more gratifying.than saying "Hey I got Goblin 34 in hold person for like 1 round until I got hit, im out of spells now". People like seeing that impact, like having the spell slot that this forum and others have already hammered on needing to be more important (resting mechanic), so if Im going to use a spell it should be friggin important, I dont have a lot of those. Resting afterwards takes away that decision making but, realistically, people using spells should still be a cool thing and its a lot more toned down than what I am used to seeing from 5e casters.

No, the 7 is there for 1 reason and 1 reason only, because if you rolled the HP for every single monster at a table it would be time consuming and so it gives someone a quick reference point if they do not want to do so. The monsters HP is a variable range, with a min and a max, if it was not, there would be literally no reason of providing the additional data (2d6) because it is a redundancy. As much as I assume you would like to be the arbiter of truth and all that is right in the world (your ego is certainly big enough for it), that is not the way things works.


Firstly, I never said that any party regardless of configuration should be able to beat it, so do not put words in my mouth. Secondly, I would not say such a thing, because I do not believe it to be true, in fact, I solidly believe that if a party is not right for an encounter, they should die, horribly and as much sympathy as I may have for them, that is perfectly fine and is the way of things. Thirdly, as nice as this lecture is, this is not an encounter that exists within the game and nor is it entirely relevant as not all encounters (and parties) are the same. Your "lethal" encounter for 1 party, may be an easy encounter for another group. Power Gamers exist and so do players who want to experience nearly no combat at all and are mostly there for socializing, a good GM is 1 who is able to accurately judge their players and build the right experience for them.

Larian is building a "GM" which reacts the same to every party, in a different medium. They cannot do nuanced gameplay and make goblins play like tactical geniuses for a power gamer, or be more fair to someone who is just there to socialize, so there needs to be some compromise. They cannot predict what the players will do and to be able to account for that, the size of a "fair" encounter, will probably vary greatly from your source book.


The fighter has an 80% chance of hitting, without advantage. 96% chance if you do have advantage.

The game provides you with potions of speed and other consumables, which, if you use intelligently during challenging encounters, it makes that "4-5 dying per turn" not much of an achievement. Please, keep telling me how super optimized this party is. Its a Warlock, a Fighter, a Cleric and a Rogue and we all know what Shadowheart's statistics look like. If I was trying to be optimized, I would have ditched either her or the fighter for Gale. Why? Because Thunderwave and Magic Missile with the necklace do far more damage than a fighter or Shadowheart could hope to do, especially with all the vertical terrain elements available within the game. As much as you "disbelieve" 4-5 enemies die per turn, its happening.

The fact that your mindset is, "set the cleric to casting healing word or aid" already tells me why you struggle to see this happening, that is not how I am playing the game. You know what the cleric is doing? Nuking things with either a longbow or guiding bolt. The best damage mitigation is dead goblins.

Fortunately for you, Larian has realized this and not every enemy is a wave of Goblins. For example, there are 2 Minotaurs in the underdark which are intended as a challenging fight, all on their lonesome. I can also give examples of fights like the Bulette, but I think you see my point. But, just because not every enemy needs to be a wave of Goblins, does not mean that a wave of Goblins does not need to exist.

The EA has 2 set piece battles, which are both potentially entirely optional. There is nothing forcing a player to do them and even if you feel compelled to complete 1 of the quest lines (either to defend the druid camp, or kill the druid camp), the 2nd set piece battle (killing the goblin camp) is still pretty much entirely optional. Set piece battles have their place, provided they are scarce. There are a sum total of 2 in the entire first chapter and neither of them are forced on you, I would say this fully meets the definition of "scarce."


Maybe its not what you do. Maybe to you, D&D is a theater of the mind and you are, "just here to see pretty explosions" but D&D has its roots in war gaming and if you look to those origins, things like using line of sight, taking advantage of height and forcing enemies through choke points would certainly be in the DNA of D&D. That is what D&D is to me, it is a glorified fantasy squad based tactics simulator and like it or not, I am a part of this game's audience just as much as you are.


Provided casters are the ones with the limited resource, yes, this is the case and that is fine. In D&D this is the case. A class doesn't need to feel useful in every circumstances, I am perfectly fine with casters feeling useless every now and again and my preferred class in D&D, for your information, is a Sorcerer. Yes, a good GM will occasionally make me feel useless within the context of the game, because it adds a touch of realism to the setting.

Players dominate solo encounters because of action economy and when the DM allows them to reach those encounters with full resources. Playing the game as reccomended means whittling down player's resources with minor encounters forcing them to make hard choices not to face every encounter at full strength, otherwise yes they'll just wipe everything going nova. A single monster however powerful can't dish out the same amount of moves a group of 4 to 6 PCs can. That's why we give the BBEG minions. As for spells if a player wastes hold person on goblin #34 that's entirely his fault, if he uses that same hold person spell at the right moment against the right opponent (that pesky spellcaster NPC? That huge hill giant who's weak against wisdom saves?) then the spell is not wasted at all and allows the party to suceed.