Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Looks like Larian cheese is here to stay

>Is it DnD for players to be able to jump clear over the head of the enemy he has engaged to land behind him, and as the enemy watches you helplessly (due to it being turn based and it's not his turn to move) as you stab him in the back?

Yes, DnD is also turn based. you can do both of these things in DnD. Tho the first one is probably a difficult acrobatics check that either lets you land on your face or get an opportunity attack, but its still something you absoluteley can do with the apropriate skillset.

>Is it DnD to be able to go invisible and then push an enemy that is twice your height and weight to his death with 100% chance of success?

i dont know where you get the 100% chance of success but tripping a troll of a bridge probably happens in every second campaign.

>Is it DnD for a character with 17 STR to be able to pick up an enemy, with perfect acquiescence from the latter, and then hurl him clear across the room? Mind you, the enemy cannot even do anything to stop you from lifting him up. Is this how DnD is played?

a character with 17 STR is jacked as shit, have you never watched wrestling as a kid? or done Judo?

>Is it DnD for low level goblins to shoot fire arrows that, even when they miss you, light the ground beneath you on fire and do guaranteed unavoidable 2D4 damage?

onward to my goblin Slayer example.
Dont roll the dice, play smart. sounds pretty much in line with that.


I dont have much time right now to dedicate to play Baldurs Gate 3 or any video games for that matter. So id like some concrete examples how to get to those outlandish situations.

In BG3, EVERYONE can do this. Is it still DnD?


This game makes your Shove 100% success if you're invisible. Is this DnD?


So, in DnD, you don't even have to roll a check to pick up an enemy and hurl him 18 metres away? All it takes is 17 STR and the desire to throw the enemy?


You don't get a choice in the matter. If a goblin with a fire arrow wishes to set your ground on fire and do guaranteed 2D4 damage to you, he automatically succeeds. Is this DnD?


You can do and see all the above in BG3. These aren't examples I pulled out of thin air.

Edited to fix the formatting.

Whatever it is D&D or not, those "cheese" have a huge impact on combats and our valuable choices.
Here's a few exemples.

- Jump/disengage = ennemies don't ever have any AOO and their melee haven't any control on the battlefield.
- Backstab = easy advantages leading to many useless spells/features/(bonus) action.
- Backstab = huge bonus over the AI
- Highground = easy advantage leading to many useless spells/features/(bonus) action.
- Highground = easy disadvantages for your ennemies. Combined with the advantage it's a god mode.
- Surfaces created by items break your concentration way too often (and if you dodge the arrow, the fire will still spread and break your concentration)
- Eating pig head in combats as a bonus action (looks ridiculous and) heal more HP than healing potion
- Dipping your sword in candle (looks ridiculous and) give players free additionnal damages over the AI.
- Shoving is so easy and OP that it's like an "instant win button" rather than a tactical choice.

There are real balance issues in the game and many choices (i.e faery fire) become bad choices because of those easy/cheesy mechanics.

Your class / party composition / "skills" / or your D&D knowledge doesn't really matter.
Synergies between classes doesn't really exist and as soon as you know BG3's basics you're gonna play the same over and over again because this is how devs "wants" you to play.

It takes two attackers to get the flanking bonus though. So jumping over someone in a 1v1 situation wouldn't benefit you in any way, unless there was a ledge behind you and you become the shover instead of the shovee.

Honestly, if a rogue in my party asked to flip over an enemy and make a strike at their unprotected back, I'd probably allow it...with a DC ~25-30 acrobatics check (maybe 20+enemy CR+enemy Acrobatics bonus?).

That's the important part: it'd require a very difficult check. And failure would mean the enemy gets an AoO against the rogue, probably after the rogue trips over the enemy and lands prone. I wouldn't allow the rogue (let alone a fighter in heavy armor) to get a guaranteed backstab for free.

The issue is that these things aren't base part of dnd rules, they'd be things you would ask your dm to do using some stat or specific situation. And most of the time these things could fail like the aforementioned rogue flipping. But BG3 doesn't give any of these a fail, they are all autosuccesses with big advantages that shove the other rules out, which DnD combat was constructed around those rules. OAs are very important, and being able to disengage for a bonus action is super rare. But these changes, the cheese, makes it common and easy to ignore 5es core and play the game too similar to DoS.

I was about to say the same thing as CJMPinger. I have mos texperience with D&D 3e but I doubt, that has changed. You can try those things, but there is a skill check and often a compelmenting skill check from the opponent and dice luck involved.

I am ok with the cheese because I understand that some people will want to play the game that way. I may occasionally shove and seek high ground, but I would prefer if the events that allow for those types of tactics were rare and special. What I do not want is for the game to be balanced around having to use cheese tactics to beat a battle. I would hate it if a dev looked at a battle and said to themselves, “we will make this battle near impossible, but if the player goes invisible and drops 6 barrels he can defeat this op boss.” Please balance assuming the player will only use their class abilities.

I want to feel like I am growing as a character. I want to use my abilities and experience the differentiation offered by each class. I don’t want to feel like my most powerful ability is to pick up an enemy and toss him into a pit. My 2 cents.

Perfectly stated, @Passerby. A huge +1.

There are two layers of cheese in this game, I find. It would probably help to split everything between those two.

Cheese baked into non-core mechanics (largely optional and can be ignored, though there may be problems with enemies being balanced around the idea of being able to exploit some of them against you):
- Barrels
- Food healing
- Dipping
- Healing another character by throwing a potion at them (almost indistinguishable from the role of a Healing Word spell)
- Shove 100% success rate when invisible
- 'Time Bubble' effect where a player character engaged in combat can purposefully stall their turn, to allow stealthed party members currently considered out of combat to sneak around and alter the battlefield conditions as they wish, and insert themselves into a fight whenever they want (arguable, some encounters are difficult enough that it feels like they're balanced around the idea that you'll be doing this exact thing, which would shove this into the bottom category)

Cheese baked into core mechanics (which I personally find to be FAR more problematic as a player simply CANNOT ignore them, due to how the majority of encounters appear to be balanced around their existence):
- Height advantage (and the simultaneous disadvantage to enemies)
- Backstab advantage
- Jump and Disengage being coupled together, and Disengage being a bonus action
- Shove bonus action
- Field Effects (arguable, I only place this here based on the fact that damaging field effects have no saving throw against them and will force a character to roll for concentration twice for the same attack, for the initial attack and then for the field effect. A DM in tabletop DnD will never do this to you, anything similar there will just combine the damage together and force you to make one roll. Fix that, and this can be thrown into the upper category instead.)

Most complaints generally center around the bottom category. Fix those, and the upper category would in theory suddenly become a lot less problematic.

On the topic of field effects in general, I just realized that the vast majority of Paladin's spells require concentration. If field effects remain the same as they are, we're going to have a lot of angry Paladin players in the future talking about how much harder it is to actually get any mileage out of their spells in BG3 due to factors completely out of their control, with no real counter besides counter cheesing so that there's less enemies around (if any) that can do something unavoidable. But at that point, it may not even be worth using those concentration spells to begin with...

I agree with most of what you've stated here, and how you've stated, except for Dipping. I'd stick Dipping into the problematic category, because of the impact it has on damage at early levels, and the fact that it can be done, with a candle. If it were a scenario, where you had alchemists fire, and "dipped" a blade in it to cause it to light, using up the alchemist's fire and an action to dip, then it would add a cost that would balance out the benefit.

As it is now, if you are within range of anything alight, it's a no brainer to dip.

True, but you can just not dip, which is why I consider it a non-core mechanic. All you gain are some damage points. That said, it's a lot of extra damage points at low level, but it doesn't force you to formulate your tactics around its existence like everything in the bottom category does.

Defenders of the current system like to argue that you can just simply ignore the cheese. That argument immediately falls apart when you simply rub two brain cells together and realize there is no way to play where you can ignore using height advantage and disadvantage, because you'll be affected by one or the other in most given situations no matter what. There's a huge difference between ignoring an option, and having to go out of your way to avoid a mechanic entirely.

Right, the enemy AI seems to have it cooked in that they at minimum will seek the high ground. To at least remain on even footing, figuratively and literally, you therefore have to try to do it too not be disadvantaged at worst.

I can't be sure but honneslty the difficulty of a few encounters let me think that the game is also balanced for you to use it a lot.
Can't say for higher levels but +2D4 (weapons) + 1D4/turn (burning) is a lot of damages. These additionnals damages are the difference between one/two/three (depending the opponents) more or less turn.
If you're playing the game with this mechanic even the hardest encounters are way easier and our weapons are way more effective than those of our ennemies.

You can also avoid shoving. The buttons are right next one of each other.

I never used it on normal playtrough because highground/backstab/jump+disengage are more than enough to beat the game easily but in a solo playthrough you really realize how powerfull it is.
Without dipping I think it would way harder. A lot of solo playthrough are also made in dual wield and dipping is probably a reason.

Psychologically it's very hard to not take advantage of it as well. A friend and I played the first play-through together and we definitely had complexity. The second time through it was way easier because, without even discussing, we were Hulk jumping everywhere and abusing every Larianism remarking, without analysis, "Wow this is so much easier!"

That's the primary reason why the "just don't use it" argument is without merit, Larian has designed the encounters, enemies, and the environment itself around those game mechanics.

>is it still DnD

first i wanna adress this quesiton: yes.
Why is it still dnd? because DnD is not as rigid as you might think. Essentialy RAW are guidelines. The Dungeon Master used to be called the Referee and this is still what is job is. Dungeon Master is a marketing term.
At the end of the day DnD isnt played RAW. If theres no intentional houserules, theres bound to be unintentional ones. or rulings.
Basically saying any deviation from RAW causes it to be less DnD is fundamentally misunderstanding how DND is played. Its a game of rulings, not a game of rules.
If you play DnD and dont consider it that way, i would advise you to DM a oneshot for your group once. You probably just havent noticed that your DM has been giving "rulings" opposed to following rules for quite some time without you noticing.

>throwing people in dnd
It would require a grappling attack which im pretty sure Baldurs Gate doesnt have implemented (hopefully yet, grappling is fun)
As for actually throwing anyone: i dont think there has ever been a concrete rule for this. Maybe in 3.5 but no edition ive played for longer periods of time had any rules for that.
That of coruse doesnt mean it doesnt exist in the world. It means its a DM ruling.
Id personally count it as a grappling attack and a subsequent improvised weapon ranged attack.

>You don't get a choice in the matter. If a goblin with a fire arrow wishes to set your ground on fire and do guaranteed 2D4 damage to you, he automatically succeeds. Is this DnD?

Yes.
If the goblin sets the ground you happen to stand on on fire, you take damage. Theres plenty of spells in DnD that make you take damage no matter what. Theres plenty of damage attakcs you cannot save against.
Maybe you SHOULDNT have let the goblin set the ground on fire should you? Maybe you shouldnt have let the goblin notice you in the first place.

>you can do all of that in BG3
ill see that when i have more time. But somehow i think these sound like cherrypicked situations. Repeating "Is this DnD" after every poitn doesnt make you believe you more, it makes me question wether or not you care about wether or not it is "DnD" or wether you just assume that i do.


>Maximuus
now theres a more usefull post.

First up
>synergies between classes dont exist
thats sadly a 5e problem. i dont know why but somehow i think Mearls was to blame for this descision. People wanted their character to stand on their own after beeing forced into mandatory teamplay in the previous edition.

>- Jump/disengage = ennemies don't ever have any AOO and their melee haven't any control on the battlefield.
- Backstab = easy advantages leading to many useless spells/features/(bonus) action.
- Backstab = huge bonus over the AI
- Highground = easy advantage leading to many useless spells/features/(bonus) action.
- Highground = easy disadvantages for your ennemies. Combined with the advantage it's a god mode.
- Surfaces created by items break your concentration way too often (and if you dodge the arrow, the fire will still spread and break your concentration)
- Eating pig head in combats as a bonus action (looks ridiculous and) heal more HP than healing potion
- Dipping your sword in candle (looks ridiculous and) give players free additionnal damages over the AI.
- Shoving is so easy and OP that it's like an "instant win button" rather than a tactical choice.

Another issue that was solved in the previous two editions that had Disengage by default.
honestly jump irks me but mostly because its animation is ugly and because i dont see why it doesnt get an AoO, personally i think jump should be seperate from a disengage and it should provoke AoO as its reach is too high.
now on jump into backstab, actually RAW you can move AROUND an enemy in DnD without provoking AoO unless you leave the range of another enemy while doing so.
I personally never understood this ruling but flanking requires two characters anyway so its not like its particulary usefull to jump behind your enemy, at least RAW it isnt.
From what i understand the point of contention is that BG3 does backstabs while keeping this rule.
I see my issue with this, but i dont hate backstabs, i always figured DnD does backstabs weird (or more to the point, i never understood why DnD doesnt have a rule for facing, which is pretty much a staple of tile based combat systems).
The easy solution is to make Jumping vulnerable to AoO, keep disengage as a 5 foot step and change the ruling of AoO to be "leaving a threatened space" opposed to "leaving the range of the triggering character"
Should be a relativeley simple fix that alleviates about half of your concerns.

>surfaces
i dont mind.t hey are good.
the only reason people dont like them is because the Original Sin games had them
>break concentration
good. Positioning should be extremeley important for casters and quite frankly they are incredibly overtuned in 5e anyway.

>eating pig heads
well theres a video game issue where any food is the same, but i agree that eating food shouldnt count as a bonus action, it doesnt bother me much tho.
>Dipping a sword in the candle.
im more concerned into dipping your bow into a candle but admittedly id prefer a system where you actually have to apply oil to it.
its strange that this isnt already a thing since lighting oil on fire is.
>Shoving
i like for honor so im not complaining about cheesing by ledging. Or actually i did because one of my players finished the boss i was hyping up for half a year by throwing her off a cliff.
but for what its worth. 5e doesnt do "combat as sport", it does "combat as war".
Logically throwing someone off a high cliff should probably kill them, and doing so isnt very hard. Positioning matters.


All in all i agree with some of your points. But i think a few of them like the eating stuff is not that big a deal and other things could be fixed very easily, either by larian or by a mod that probably wouldnt be a lot of work to do

EDIT:
On height advantage. i simply cannot agree with you on that one. i think thats a good ruling and it mirrors the rules for concealment.
Now cover tends to be an AC bonus, i dont realy like how 5e does these thigns anyway. but at the end of the day shooting someone wwho stands on a ledge on top of your is bound to be harder than shooting someone whose profile is fully visible to you.
Likewise, shooting someone from a highground where its harder for the other to cover himself with a shield, duck behind cover or generally to reduce their target area.
I dont care if its balanced as long as it makes sense which it does in this case.

EDIT:
>Just dont use it
i dont agree with "Just dont use it"
and i understand the point of people not seeing that as an excuse.
Its a game created to take advantage of what the game world gives you. Therfore any option given to you should be a sound one.
i just dont see most of them as that bad.
My primary issue would be with AoOs and Jump, especialy jump i suppose.
I think ruling AoOs to trigger on leaving a threatened area (wether or not they enter another threatened area) would do a lot to mitigate larians problem with melee stickyness (OS2 had very much a simmilar problem).
It would of course also not be RAW dnd, but stickyness in general is something that 5e struggles with hence why the infamous Tunnel Fighter Sentinel Polearm Mastery build is considered "OP" despite only doing what your average Fighter could do in other editions.

Are you stating for the record that it is DnD for any character, with any stats, wearing heavy armour, to automatically succeed in jumping over an enemy and then land behind him and then backstab him? Is this what DnD is to you? It's a simple question that only requires a yes or no answer. Yes, we know that the DM can adjudicate individual instances and decide on the DC to pass. But that is not the case here. So, I repeat, automatic success with jumping over enemies and landing behind them to backstab them. Is this how DnD is played, yes or no?


Is it DnD for the DM to say that every grappling attempt automatically succeeds as long as he has 17 STR?


There are some spells that cause damage that you can't save against, such as Magic Missiles or Heat Metal, but even those can be Counterspelled, once level 3 spells are available. These fire arrows cannot be dodged with AC or with the Shield spell, or Counterspelled. The vast majority of spells in DnD give the target a chance to avoid it or halve it. Not these fire arrows, which are also ubiquitous among the goblins. You seem fine with such cheese tactics, but many aren't, and the proliferation of surface effects is among the chief complaints even among those who love the game.

As for not being seen, you can use it to justify any number cheap tactics, so I'm not surprised you reached for this excuse. If an invisible goblin sneaks behind you and shoves you to your death. You should not have been seen, then, should you? A goblin has a weapon that kills you on the spot, no saving throw, bypasses your AC. Should have stayed hidden then. Let's proliferate these weapons so that every goblin has one. Shouldn't be a problem, just don't be seen. Is this how you play DnD?


I didn't have to assume, since you already came right out to claim that cheap and cheesy tactics are what DnD games are. I quote,



I'm merely putting your claims to the test. And you're right that I cherry-picked these examples, because if I didn't and had to include each and every Larian cheese in the game, it'll be a long long post.

Disengage wouldn't be a problem if it was an action rather than a bonus action. As an action it would be a tactical choice or a meaningfull decision.
The only problem is that it's a bonus action. Being engaged in melee doesn't really mean something even for casters and ranged because even if you suffer a "threatened" status"... you just have to disengage as a bonus action to perform your action without any malus. Ennemies won't ever trigger any AOO and being engaged never really matter because you can disengage for free.

Untie disengage and jump would be a good first step but it's really not enough.

Flanking doesn't exist in BG3. I won't argue about moving behind ennemies for free in D&D or the advantage you would have (or not...) but what's call "backstab" is the advantage you have on your attack roll when you're behind an ennemy. It means that your melee characters always have advantage on their attack roll for free and that you'll always use the same tricks again and again.
The flanking optionnal rule would increase the synergy between characters, it would create conditions (2 characters in melee) and it would create consequences (you can be flanked).

It's the same about highground. I'm 100% fine with "bonuses" due to highground - better range, even a small flat bonus to attack roll -...
But now you have an advantage on your attack rolls. Combats are really uninterresting in long term because you can have the best bonus to your %to hit for free. Backstab for melee, highground for ranged/casters.

I'm not really sure I read someone saying "remove backstab and highground as source of bonuses"... But a lot ask Larian to remove them as "source of advantage" (the advantage of D&D).

It's a bit the same about shoving. Shoving someone is really a cool feature but as a bonus action, once again it becomes very powerfull because you can do it at each turn + perform your usual action.
If you struggle in combats, you don't have to think and try to understand how it works, what you could have done better, where to position your characters or something... Just press the shove button and you'll win. Again, the main problem is that it's a bonus action and that you can shove creatures way too far (distance is not related to your strenght) .. not that you have the choice to shove your target.

About surfaces I'm not going to talk about DoS... I don't care but you're wrong according to me because it completely break the concentration mechanic. Your concentration is broken all the time so all those spells are close to useless.
When you dodge the arrow or the potion, the fire surface is still created under your feet so you always take damages. This is a problem for concentration spells but not only...
Except if your cleric concentrated on bless is 200M away from combats, your position DOESN'T matter because ennemies always have arrows or surfaces potions. They can throw them very far/high, hitting you with the fire surface even if the attack fail.

It looks like Larian want to create new/additionnal mechanics and that's very cool to me.

The problem is that those mechanics are too powerfull. They usually say in interviews that D&D is about players agency and choices but in combats their decisions completely lead to the opposite.
There are tons of possibilities and spells and actions and classes features and so on in D&D but in BG3 only Larian's homebrew really matter. If you use them, you'll win. If you don't, you'll die.

And it's not a matter of exploit or OP build (like I heard it was in DoS with necrofire / the armor system or something). These rules completely overshadowed everything else and whatever your class, your skills, your knowledge of the rules... You'll always play the same after a few hours because there's only one good way to deal with BG3's combats.

Adding in some clarifications to help the discussion.

Surfaces are native to D&D, you can create surfaces in 5e with oil flask + produce flame. The issue is that surfaces are massively buffed by borrowed code from Divinity: Original Sin. Surfaces need to behave more like rules-as-written. Oil Flask

On positioning though, with high ground Advantage and low ground disadvantage casters rarely get to choose their positioning. That's the other side of the discussion. The player could be safely positioning their casters, but the game is incentivizing them to do otherwise.

It's very much a rule implementation issue. Surfaces shouldn't be breaking concentration.

EDIT: Also, where's our DC 10 dex check to extinguish the flames? Alchemist's Fire
Baldur's Gate 3 needs a patch just for rule implementation.