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#745655 20/12/20 07:35 AM
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Doesn't it bother anyone that you can fight level 3 or 4 mindflayers , beholders, and dragons?

I'm worried that once the newness wears off and there's more of the game to play that it will turn very stale since if you've killed Mindflayers (CR 7), Archdruids (CR 12 when NPC), Red Dragons (CR 10 when Young and CR 17 when Adult) at level 4 what's there to really accomplish?
Yes D&D isn't only about killing things but if there's no real struggle, no foes temporarily insurmountable, where's the danger?
Where's the sense of accomplishment where you can say that you've tackled foes that can destroy whole villages?
There doesn't seem to be any build up and with no build up there's no release, nearing the end of the game besides new and shiny gear with new abilities to use will the feel of the game be any different from the beginning?

In BG1 you start off killing Xvarts and Wolves, near the end you can take on the Flaming Fist by the droves and Demon Knights.
In BG2 you start off fighting Vampires, Mummies, and Spirit Trolls near the end you fight Amelyssan a Cleric/Mage so close to Godhood she can almost smell it.
In BG3 you can fight Mindflayers and a Red Dragon before level 5... so who or what are we fighting later on?

Last edited by mr_planescapist; 20/12/20 07:42 AM.
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Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
Doesn't it bother anyone that you can fight level 3 or 4 mindflayers , beholders, and dragons?

I'm worried that once the newness wears off and there's more of the game to play that it will turn very stale since if you've killed Mindflayers (CR 7), Archdruids (CR 12 when NPC), Red Dragons (CR 10 when Young and CR 17 when Adult) at level 4 what's there to really accomplish?
Yes D&D isn't only about killing things but if there's no real struggle, no foes temporarily insurmountable, where's the danger?
Where's the sense of accomplishment where you can say that you've tackled foes that can destroy whole villages?
There doesn't seem to be any build up and with no build up there's no release, nearing the end of the game besides new and shiny gear with new abilities to use will the feel of the game be any different from the beginning?

In BG1 you start off killing Xvarts and Wolves, near the end you can take on the Flaming Fist by the droves and Demon Knights.
In BG2 you start off fighting Vampires, Mummies, and Spirit Trolls near the end you fight Amelyssan a Cleric/Mage so close to Godhood she can almost smell it.
In BG3 you can fight Mindflayers and a Red Dragon before level 5... so who or what are we fighting later on?

Other posters, myself included, have brought up similar concerns about the perceived lack of logical progression in the game, particularly with the enemies we face but it also applies to other parts of the game.

Sadly I don't think it will change because as a whole the game seems to want to throw everything possible at us from the very outset, whether it be enemies, locations (Underdark as a level 4 party?!), our horny and outlandish back-storied companions.

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I hate RPGs based on level systems and its definitely one of the things i generally don't like about D&D, BUT at the same time its a key defining element of D&D. When you step away from it you take a big chunk of the feeling D&D games have and that's just another reason BG3 fails for me as a D&D game.

To be honest I don't think FR is that great of a lore that its worth for just the names, mainly because it is that limited by D&D mechanics. So if Larian wants to do their own game, they should have stuck with DOS - where the levels are just a mechanics that meant nothing for story telling. Naturally D&D doesn't mention levels in their lore, but if you ever played a game of D&D through any iteration you get an understanding of what each monster means and who/what you are dealing with if they go up against each other. BG3 is horrible in that regard... all characters are definitely not level 1 adventurers and the world mixes all kinds of CR that you can still tackle having an huge disconnect to the skills/mechanics... it completely fails to feel like a D&D setting.

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Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
if you've killed Mindflayers (CR 7), Archdruids (CR 12 when NPC), Red Dragons (CR 10 when Young and CR 17 when Adult) at level 4 what's there to really accomplish?
Kill level 8 Mindflayers, Archdruids, Red Dragons. Then level 12 in the last chapter.

Sad thing is, it doesn't matter of the game looses appeal. Beginning is explosive and fast paced, it will look good on streams and people will jump in. Most players don't finish (or get that deep really) games anyway. Play for a few hours, give glowing reviews and move on.

Watching videos that's what struck me the most - how big and loud everything is from the get go. And that unfortunately can get dull rather quickly. At least for me.

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Originally Posted by Wormerine
Watching videos that's what struck me the most - how big and loud everything is from the get go. And that unfortunately can get dull rather quickly. At least for me.

My sentiments too. Personally I find that a palpable sense of growth and achievement is diminished by being exposed to so much so early on.

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Originally Posted by Etruscan
My sentiments too. Personally I find that a palpable sense of growth and achievement is diminished by being exposed to so much so early on.
Gothic 1&2 did it so very well. Using creatures to gate your progress, including powerful creatures you weren’t equipped to deal with yet in missions, so your growth is clear when you maw them down. BGs used levels not only as a part of your raise as child of Bhaal, but also as a tool to herd players in the right direction.

That’s an element most modern RPGs struggle with, maybe except Kingmaker though I feel that one had some other issues with how they leveled content.

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Agreed... monsters we shouldn't be seeing... items we shouldn't be getting(+10 int?!)... crazy/lazy mechanics/features that make no sense(jump/disengage)... this game, while very pretty, has me very concerned as a D&D game... taking the hope/wait and see approach they are going straighten
out/add some sort of balance or consistency to what i see as crazy/off the rails but... my hopes at 150+ hrs play time are not as high as they were at 10hrs that ive found my game for the next 5-8yrs... what im looking for...

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Sorry but what mindflayer and red dragon are we talking about here?

the mindflayer that cannot move and has 1hp left before you kill it? the red dragon with the gith patrol that clearly was not meant to be fought here and literally has a cutscene design for it to move out of the scene to give the player a chance to fight the gith patrol but some plyers breaks/exploits the game before triggering the cutscene to kill it?

is this what you guys are talking about?

I did not finish the early access, but this is where I have encountered the mindflayer and red dragon
are there any other places I might have missed where there is a red dragon of mindflayer encounter?

about Archdruids, I really do not know much about it so I cannot say anything

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Makes me feel a little sad that I am not good enough of an exploiter to know how to fight the red Dragon. wink

But truth be told a red Dragon that is a slave to this space-pirate murderhobo race cannot be that proud and strong.
Still I must say when I first saw it's stats and had little experience, I was almost unable to approach the Gith. grin
They looked like ants besides the red Dragon. It was pretty intimidating.


But yeah I figured it is probably very killable when you know how to.
This is a videogame not some reallife tabletop D&D session.
The "scalings" will be different I guess.

But I agree - a Dragon is something I feel should be strong enough to make a lvl.10 group sweat.
I can already see how throwing our bottle-Beholder down there and C4 smokebarrels, will allow us to kill them all at once.
Feels very powerful.
Maybe a little too much so.

The Githyankee patroul felt for me they were the only group in the game that was supposed to have a similar level of power and might as our playergroup.
As they have high innitiative, very good gear and use invisbility potions even to mess us up.
Taking them AND a red Dragon feels a little too strong.


Then again we do have
° a Vampirspawn
° Mystra's Ex
° and a Warlock of landwide fame in our group

They do feel deserving of being just stronger as our "mere original character" if I may say so.

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My experience might be different, probably because I used my ranger to backstab the gyth patrol and I also surprised the beholder - but both fights were not difficult. I admit though it can be seen as exploiting the game. In any case a beholder shouldn't be taken down by a party of 4 lvl4...

I never tried to kill the Dragon because I didn't look at his level and its D&D - he shouldn't be killable at all for a group of lvl4...


Again, BG3 fails completely at giving you a sense of being in the world of Faerun. Just random encounters using known names for monsters. In BG2 the Underdark was a threatening place for place for a high level party, exactly like you knew it from the lore. Here the monsters might scare you with their ability creep, but overall it felt more like a demonstration of all kind of models they have in there with abilities adjusted to be just above your level than this being the legendary Underdark.

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I have no problem introducing high level creatures into the early campaign. I just wish any that are they were far more aggressive and not as cheesable. Teach the player that bigger and badder things are out there in this world. It can actually a fantastic world-building mechanism.

The world should not be a coddled playground where you only run up against foes you can deal with. Mess with the wrong person, pay for it. In the Original Fallout - one of my memorable moments is running into a gang of mini-gun wielding super mutants early in the game, and having my character literally being torn into two by a hail of bullets.


Now specifically regarding BG3:

Red Dragon:
Has anyone actually killed the Red Dragon legitimately without some sort of barrelmancy or physics cheese? All Larian needs to do to fix that situation is to make the creature far more aggressive if you mess with it (that includes coming too close). Remove the "level/CR" that is placed beside the creature (or put in an appropiate one - 10 for young adult, etc). And finally, give the thing fire immunity like it's supposed to have.

Mindflayer:
If you're talking about finishing the wounded Mindflayer... I honestly don't see why not. Once again, this shouldn't be a magical playground where powerful creatures should magically disappear for the player's sake. The fact that the game doesn't expect you to fight it at normal status makes this work IMO.

"Beholders":
I have not found a Beholder in the game. Spectators though, there are 2. They are challenge rating 3, and totally appropriate for a lower level party.

Archdruid:
In BG3, it's clear that Archdruid is being used as a political title as opposed to a true measurement of power. Kagha declared herself as Archdruid after Halsin was supposedly gone. It has nothing to do with her power - she didn't magically got more powerful when she promoted herself. This is a situation of leaning on too much meta-knowledge of the Monster Manual (which btw, is highly discouraged in PnP games).

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You dont scale creatures to solve this, you just make the game more difficult across the board and buff said enemies so that you can no longer approach them and beat them at lower levels. Do not scale levels. That is a horrible idea in RPGs and we have been fighting hard to keep this out of our games since Oblivion/Skyrim.

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I agree with no level scaling, just make the game harder all around, specifically enemies and monsters that are supposed to be fearsome. But I would like to say that there should be appropriate signs of, "Do not fight this fight unless you think you bad" because i hate save scumming. I enjoy when the game is mostly fair, and then if i choose the dark and scary path, i am justly rewarded with an ass kicking or a story for the ages. For Larian's background, with DOS2, there are several examples of if you walk the wrong direction, you will die die and die. It's really not that fun to uncover parts of the story, only to struggle with a fight for an hour than conclude that you just have to save scum and turn around. Is that how real DND is? Can you stumble down the wrong path and the DM just says "you came to the wrong neighborhood" and kills everyone?

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I don't mind encountering higher CR creatures early on. Not every adventure needs to start off with killing rats.

That said, when I DM I play around with creature CR a lot, scaling them up/down to make a memorable encounter for the party. And that doesn't seem to get stale.

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Originally Posted by Topgoon
Now specifically regarding BG3:

Red Dragon:
Has anyone actually killed the Red Dragon legitimately without some sort of barrelmancy or physics cheese? All Larian needs to do to fix that situation is to make the creature far more aggressive if you mess with it (that includes coming too close). Remove the "level/CR" that is placed beside the creature (or put in an appropiate one - 10 for young adult, etc). And finally, give the thing fire immunity like it's supposed to have.

Mindflayer:
If you're talking about finishing the wounded Mindflayer... I honestly don't see why not. Once again, this shouldn't be a magical playground where powerful creatures should magically disappear for the player's sake. The fact that the game doesn't expect you to fight it at normal status makes this work IMO.

"Beholders":
I have not found a Beholder in the game. Spectators though, there are 2. They are challenge rating 3, and totally appropriate for a lower level party.

Archdruid:
In BG3, it's clear that Archdruid is being used as a political title as opposed to a true measurement of power. Kagha declared herself as Archdruid after Halsin was supposedly gone. It has nothing to do with her power - she didn't magically got more powerful when she promoted herself. This is a situation of leaning on too much meta-knowledge of the Monster Manual (which btw, is highly discouraged in PnP games).

I have to admit you are right, they have explanations for everything. But still for not a single second of this game I did feel like a level 1 character that has to rethink challenging anyone. Overall the story, the companions - nothing feels like you at the beginning of your journey. I remember back in BG1 a simply lvl 6 bounty hunter kicked the ass of my unprepared lvl 4 party as I underestimated him thinking its just a lonesome little bounty hunter. Seeing Sarevok killing Gorion I knew that I'm suposed to feel afraid. None of this athmosphere is present in BG3. You are more suprised when something like minotaurs are all of a sudden beefed up with additional abilities and as random encounter turn out to be much tougher than the gyth hunting down mindflayers for fun.

Its not even about the difficulty level. Its about how the world feels. In BG3 the execptional is standard.

Still it all could be just some skewed perception.

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And this is the problem with the base of gamers here - no imagination and no concept of variety. The archdruid isn't an actual archdruid - she was second in command. The actual archdruid, when you find him, is weakened and fighting a mass of enemies that overwhelm him. The mindflayer you kill is near death - you are not fighting them at full strength. I never encountered the red dragon, but there is probably mechanics making it sensible. You look in the monster manual and you get what the average enemy is like - you can face much stronger goblins with 18 level stats and such if a DM threw them your way or you could have a feeble dragon to provide an easier time. People seem to have a difficulty comprehending that not all of one type of a creature are the exact same thing. I have to ask if their first encounter with a black person was Michael Jordan playing for the Chicago Bulls, decide that all black people can dunk with ease, and they come across Joseph Anthony Cox (the little person from Bad Santa) and assume he must be able to dunk as well because he too is black. Different members of the same group have various abilities and the ability to make strong or weak versions of a group is just decent storytelling. You don't kill the mindflayer trying to get passerbys to dig it out and get thousands of XP for it - you get what is comparable to the task at hand for killing a near defenseless mindflayer on the verge of death.

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I had the same concern as OP and that's something I fear since tje first gameplay reveal with dragons and explosions in the intro cinematic...

There's nothing more dangerous we can find and again, the game is gonna be more gamey than really consistent inside the reality of D&D and the FR.

Everything will rely on the creatures levels which is just a gamey concept and creatures that are supposed to be very dangerous (or the most dangerous) will be ridiculously weak.

Again, it looks like they picked and dropped "cool" creatures everywhere because they consider it's not fun enough to fight more usual (and weaker/less impressive) creatures...

This is totally something I hate in Larian's game design.
Everything is supposed to be special... But nothing is really special, impressive and interresting anymore after a few hours.... The level of "amazingness" reach 100% after the first hours and nearly nothing look epic anymore.

Originally Posted by biomag
Its not even about the difficulty level. Its about how the world feels. In BG3 the execptional is standard.

Exactly this...

Last edited by Maximuuus; 21/12/20 03:20 AM.

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Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
Doesn't it bother anyone that you can fight level 3 or 4 mindflayers , beholders, and dragons?

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=93583&Number=718792


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Originally Posted by VeronicaTash
And this is the problem with the base of gamers here - no imagination and no concept of variety. The archdruid isn't an actual archdruid - she was second in command. The actual archdruid, when you find him, is weakened and fighting a mass of enemies that overwhelm him. The mindflayer you kill is near death - you are not fighting them at full strength. I never encountered the red dragon, but there is probably mechanics making it sensible. You look in the monster manual and you get what the average enemy is like - you can face much stronger goblins with 18 level stats and such if a DM threw them your way or you could have a feeble dragon to provide an easier time. People seem to have a difficulty comprehending that not all of one type of a creature are the exact same thing. I have to ask if their first encounter with a black person was Michael Jordan playing for the Chicago Bulls, decide that all black people can dunk with ease, and they come across Joseph Anthony Cox (the little person from Bad Santa) and assume he must be able to dunk as well because he too is black. Different members of the same group have various abilities and the ability to make strong or weak versions of a group is just decent storytelling. You don't kill the mindflayer trying to get passerbys to dig it out and get thousands of XP for it - you get what is comparable to the task at hand for killing a near defenseless mindflayer on the verge of death.

That's an exceptional streak of terrible arguments to justify a poor design decision.

I think Biomag summarized the issue wonderfully here:
Quote
Its not even about the difficulty level. Its about how the world feels. In BG3 the execptional is standard.

"The Archdruid is not an archdruid but a regent" is the only one with some actual merit.
The actual archdruid is not tagged as weakened or debuffed, but as a LEVEL 5, period. Even later when at peak form. Which, aside for the horrendous idea of scaling any NPC or monster to the player's level range, leads to the secondary problem that levels shouldn't be openly displayed to begin with.
The fact that you can kill a dying mindflayer with a single HP remaining is not an issue compared to the fact that he's explicitly labeled as a low level enemy.
Having the occasional "goblin champion" wouldn't even be an issue, if not for the fact that by this game's standards that category summarizes half of the goblins thrown at you.
The red dragon shouldn't even be an actual fight (it's there just to look intimidating in a cutscene), but it doesn't change the fact that you can target it and it's labeled as level 4. The similar Red Dragon in the prologue can be targeted and it's labeled as a level 1 creature... Are you seeing a pattern here, Veronica?

Your example about the "seeing a black person for the first time" is completely misplaced, anyway, since D&D has already in place the rules for having humanoid sentient races scale across the entire range of the power levels, while monsters aren't supposed to be leveled at all (they have a challenge rating, instead).


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