Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback A little feedback about combat difficulty

As a DM for over 20 years I have to say that if I did to my players what BG3 does to a low level party, my players would all quit. Perhaps not EVERY fight should be about overwhelming odds that bring you to the brink of death and use all your abilities. I think there are far too many enemies in most of the battles compared to the resources D&D 5E provides. If level 2 monsters (CR2?) have 28 hit points and can 1 shot my level 3 cleric with a 17AC there really shouldn't be 4 of them to fight at the same time. After I managed to win that fight (using all of my potions of healing), my whole party died in a poison cloud - no time to celebrate I suppose. Much has been said about the ground effects as well which only compound the issue. Used sporadically this has a cool effect. Used every battle it becomes annoying. My opinion is that the combat is far too difficult right now to be enjoyable (unless you like the reload button). The DMs job (aka game developer in this case) isn't to punish the player in to submission which is what it feels like so far.

I'd also like to see the skill checks balanced a bit more. If I make a persuasion check only to have to immediately make the exact same check in the next sentence then what was the point of the first skill check? A tadpole in the woods comes to mind as an example...yes I want to kill it...are you sure...yes...didn't I just pass that check? My point is don't make succeeding on skill checks worthless by making too many of them.

As I've said in other threads: The game is too hard if you're trying to play it like DnD.

It's too easy if you treat it as the poorly balanced farce of a tactical game that it is. Exploit freezing blood, burning grease, hiding and disengaging as universal bonus actions, and so forth and you can trivialize every encounter I've seen in the first 6 hours.

I have to agree the balancing on encounters is way off they could also do with letting part members who are stabilized take a full turn instead off only getting a bonus action.

Yeah, maybe it's because I've played DOS games before, but the game seems very easy so far. Some of the fights Swen died on in the demo I've been breezing through. I've been wandering into other fights that I guess are supposed to overwhelm you and I just kinda blow people up. I could see how it would be difficult though if you don't abuse cantrips and terrain effects (which I hate and think are bullshit and don't belong in this game).

The game of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and its encounters is balanced on two basic premises.

Each adventuring day, a party of three to five adventurers should be able to handle six to eight Medium or Hard encounters (DMG, page 84).

Most combat encounters should last 3 rounds on average (DMG, page 274).

This means that the characters playing the game should have enough resources–including hit points, spells, special powers, etc.–to last roughly 18 rounds of combat.

In addition, the party should take at least two short rests per day to recover a portion of their spent resources.

This is currently running for me at about 2-5 turns of combat, NOT ACCEPTABLE. DnD not DOS please

You have one short rest per day, which reduces greatly the power of classes like Warlock and Fighter, and every combat is an epic war against huge amount of creatures that drains all of your resources, so in the case of your cleric and wizard short rest won't make them ready for more battles, you might as well just take a long rest.

Combat should drain the character's resources slowly, from encounter to encounter, spells in D&D are not on cool down like DOS.

I agree re the surface measures - hopefully they change or are not so prominent later in the game. I think with a bit of tweaking on damage & duration it wouldn’t be so bad

I have actually found the game to be too easy. Consider that maybe you're just not very good at strategy games and choose a lower difficulty when it's available. As it stands, we know they are going to add more difficulty levels. Original sin 2 added two difficulty modes both lower than classic (the standard difficulty). They only added one that was harder. My hope is that they will add two harder, and two easier. That way you can tailor the experience to be what you want it to be.

The encounters seem to be designed to all be rested inbetween. I finished the early access and I only recall a single location that wouldn't let me fast travel (i.e. go back to camp and rest).

There's really no downside to blowing all your per-day resources in a single encounter because you can just rest in-between pretty much every single encounter in the game.

I definitely agree with the heart of your criticism. I agree that the game is not balanced in the same way that a DnD campaign would be, but if you play it within the restrictions of the video game I don't think it's difficult.

I do think that re-balancing everything so the encounters are less punishing and resting isn't so readily available would be a good change.

I also find the game difficulty a little too easy.
Positioning is absolutely vital, even before combat, as you cant spend a turn getting to position you have already lost 1-2 party members from being at a disadvantage.


I have not been exploiting ground effects, or jump disengage
I have full rested maybe 3-4 times and I have not used a single potion throughout chapter 1.
There have maybe been 2-3 very challenging fights and 1 extremely hard fight but still nothing overwhelming....


I will say though that some fight are a little long if you have a party of spellcasters.
you could quite easily run out of spell slots early game

I do consider myself somewhat hardcore though and like to be challenged by the game I play.
I also have never played D&D before so maybe this is out of the norm for long time players of the series.