Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Leveling is too fast or increase the level cap

I've noticed while playing that I will reach level 4 not even half way through Act 1 EA. As soon as you hit the beach, recruit Shadowheart and Astarion you will level up to 2 right after dealing with the people trying to dig out the mind flayer. In one of my playthroughs I was already level 4 before even dealing with the Goblins or Tieflings. I wonder if it would be possible to slow down the leveling or perhaps increase the level cap to at most Level 6. The spells also don't match your level. if you are level 3 then the spells should be level 3 instead of 2 for all magic characters.

This is actually per design in DnD, and for a good reason.

As you might know, the current max character level in 5th edition is 20. And the highest leveled spells are meant for dealing with enemies near the level cap. Therefor, spellcasters get higher level spells every second class level so that they get their last layer, level 9 spells, when reaching class level 17. Instead of getting them at class level 9 which would let them destroy battlefields before martial classes also at class level 9 have enough of features to be even nearly competitive.

Edit: I might have misunderstood you and if so I'm sorry for coming off as mansplaining.

We will be lucky to see lvl 5 before release … ea is a testing ground and as much as I’d like to see more ideally I don’t want to see too much …you get used to the level cap the game has such a high replay factor you get used to lvl 4 max

Both, ideally.

Leveling is way too fast and the level cap is too low for the content and testing purposes.

I don't know... Maybe if they add another large area to act 1. But only level 5. Level 5 will give spellcasters access to level 3 spells. These include some fairly powerful spells in comparison; Fireball, Call Lightning & Protection from Energy being some of my personal favorites. Spellcasting warrior classes/subclasses get 2nd level spells. Warrior classes get an extra attack... There is a huge jump in power from level 4 to level 5... And more importantly for Larian, I would think, a huge jump in game mechanic complexity.
But leveling could definitely be slowed down a bit. Not so much the masses get irritated enough to not spend money, but right now you could easily walk out of the Druid Grove at level 5.

Larian seems to imply that we will still be getting more regions and more patches for Early Access. Swen said in a stream that they still have a long way to go before the game is done. If early access is helping them, they could keep the game in early access until the game is completely done and just keep giving us more content while they are working on it. This is something that Epic Games did with Fortnite. That game was in Early Access for three years but they kept adding content. During BG3 early access they could give us more content, such as new regions, new levels, abilities, ect. We're playtesting the game for them and giving them feedback so that they can continue to release content and fix and bugs/glitches.

We were litteraly told multiple times with HUGE emphasis ...
That we will be limited by both levels, and amount of content.

Yet once uppon a time some newguy come to this forum asking for more of this or that. -_-

"Its not going to happen". :-/

I don't agree with Rag really ever, so this is pretty amazing, but I agree, they've made it VERY clear, what we see is what we get for EA. If you're expecting more regions, levels, etc, you're going to be very disappointed.

If they continue building on it, then yeah, of course they'll have to increase the level cap at some point. I am under the impression early access will be limited to act 1. From various comments I've seen and heard, they are working on the rest of the game, not just early access. In previous games from Larian, early access had been primarily about game mechanics, not content. In this case there is some motivation for us to have input on classes and races and such, but not the actual locations. I'm assuming that was decided long ago.
Edit: Just to be clear... Larian has straight out said, "The early access version of Baldur's Gate 3 includes act 1 of the game".

Uhmm... She joined the same month you did.
And to be fair, they literally just added a new area to early access.

+1 to leveling more slowly. Going from level 2 to level 3 in particular happens way too fast imo. In PnP, you want to level up quickly because low levels are boring as characters don't have many options. But you're controlling a party of 4 in BG3, so you still have lots of options, and being at lower level for a bit longer will help people get a better feel for and understanding of the characters and basic mechanics.

Also +1 to raising the level cap to 5. Not much more to say here; there's been loads of threads dedicated to this.

Larian could have taken this opportunity to rename spell levels to "tiers" or something else. But ah well.

Exactly, I also liked when Swen said in a recent stream that they will be adding more content soon and that some might even be thing we didn't expect. So, I'm curious to see what that could be.

Your comment is uncalled for. No need to be rude and you sound like your gatekeeping.

+1 to the OP.

The reason why I said what I said is because in a recent stream Swen did in fact say, I'm going to paraphrase, "We have so much work to do and have a loooong way to go but more is coming to you and some things you didn't expect." Unless they are releasing the full game soon, which I doubt or they may be in fact adding more content to early access and maybe prolonging early access. In the gaming industry this is in fact common among developers to prolong beta or early access if it's helpful to them in developing the game until full release. This is something that Epic Games did with Fortnite. That game was in Early Access for 3 years before the full game was available. Baldur's Gate has already been in EA for a year and I wouldn't be surprised if they prolong it. As long as they know that, we, the players are helpful to them creating the game and making it better.

I can understand how people really want a higher level cap and I can certainly see how, in early access, leveling up might feel too fast. However as has been said before, this is by design. Not by design of Larian, mind you, but by design of DnD 5e.

For your convenience, here is the experience table of the game on roll20.net.

As you will see, the amount of experience required for each level is not linear - it increases as you level up. That is why getting to level 3 is pretty easy. That is very important too, since many classes get to choose some kind of path or specialisation at level 3, which will have a huge impact on how the class plays and feels from then on out. At that point there also is a significant increase in EXP required for level 4. The increase is even more steep from level 4 to 5 and so on. So while leveling up from level 1 to 3 does feel fast because it is, it will naturally slow down afterwards.

TLDR: Patience. Leveling up will most likely feel just right, come full release.

I don't think, that the level cap will be raised before then, especially since we don't even have all classes, yet. Implementing the remaining classes with the level cap in place seems logical as opposed to raising the level cap first and implementing the remaining classes afterwards.

I too think that leveling is a bit too fast at the moment. Leveling from level 1 to 2 should be rather quick, but after that should be slowed way down in my opinion. It feels almost unearned to level up to 3 and 4 this fast.

It's all jacked up. A single Imp is 200 XP. If I faced an imp at level 1 with 1 other character in the party, I should earn 100 XP. Fight 3 and level up. So, the first fight alone should level you up.

But they've severely nerfed the imps, and they only give you like 25 XP or something for the fight. Intellect devourers are 450 XP each. So if you fight 3 with just Shadowheart, which is utterly ridiculous because 1 is a serious challenge for 4-6 level 2 characters, you should be easily level 3.

In short, the enemies you face actually should drive you very quickly to level 4, but they are so severely nerfed that it throws the whole system out of whack.

TBH, the whole game works much better from a multiplayer perspective. If you have 4 PCs+1 (Lae'zel and/or Shadowheart), the encounters are more appropriate, and if you split XP, also appropriate.

Do you mean last Panel From Hell, or do you have some other source in mind, when you say "recent stream"?
Asking just so i can go search for exact phrasing.

Also, adding more "content" to EA is right now kinda granted ...
I mean we still dont have 3 whole classes, lot spells, lot and lot subclasses (especialy for Wizards, wich kinda puzzles me since they should be pretty easy to implement ...) and bunch of other stuff for other classes like Pacts for Warlock, forms for Druids, pets for Rangers, etc ... there is lot things they still should add.

Many people ofcourse see "content" only as new location, but that is not what it means. :-/

Leveling is to fast no two ways about it. Level cap is not related to xp injections that are thrown around like candy, level cap should have it's own thread.

But Level threshold are way to small in my opinion. I miss huge xp numbers from BG 2 for whatever reason i loved the bigger numbers...
Geting 100xp just looks meh to me, even knowing that the end result is the same.