Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Veteran 5e DM/Divinity player critique

I am happy this is resonating with people. I don't want to be in an echo chamber though, I am but one of many voices. If anyone else wants to throw down the gauntlet be my guest and chime in @ thread.

+1 from me too

it also amounts to yet another post begging Larian to at least /try/ and stick to the D&D 5e rules

Well that's like the Grove Gate main armory that one, doesn't seem out of place.

2) The surfaces are a cool addition in my opinion, but maybe a bit too much of it.

3) The player ranger can't summon a companion in the middle of combat, as far as I am aware. You can summon a familiar or if summon while sneaking out of combat to begin one, which I don't see how to prevent. In general, I like what they are doing with the ranger in BG3 because official 5e content Ranger abilities are useless in combat and irrelevant in high tier play. Note, I love the Ranger archetype, and play it, but sometimes I just wish I rolled a Scout Rogue.

4) I think giving enemies a better arsenal is exactly what this game needs, because it is much more focused on combat. It would be boring to fight standard goblins all the time, at least in my opinion.

Agree on 1 and 5

Just coming from Nautiloid you have good stack of throwables. Fights are easy as it is, a lot of consumables to cheese them is making things even worse. Cantrips and especially mage hand are just silly cherry on top. Adding jump and we have complete clusterfuck of wacky mechanics taking game far, far away of being D&D.

The Ranger's problem is not his pet, it's those other overly limited abilities.

I know that right now already they have the summoning for animal companions implemented on what I assume is the bones of the Summoner spells from DOS2 outside of combat (For PCs at least, enemy Rangers can just drop their companions on the middle of your party right now.) They have always been the most RP heavy of the classes because of the favored enemy and natural explorer features. --Because you're right, they're useless if the game doesn't revolve around how impactful those two choices are. A Fighter with a bow joke can be inserted here.

Honestly my quickest fix for something like this at least for BGIII is to give them a more generalized set of class feats for early level that have to deal with navigating difficult terrain, minimum bow and missile range, (threatened debuff is weird in general) and more utility out of having the pet around so it isn't just a souped up Find Familiar.

+2

+1

I wouldn't mind giving enemies more tools if the number of enemies got reduced to compensate. 5e combat is largely decided by number of combatants and both sides and how many times they can act or attack in a given turn. The GENERAL rule is if both sides are around the same CR the side with more actions will usually win statistically.

You can try this yourself in the Goblin Camp actually! If you aggro the initial gate guards and save/heal up before engaging the fortress you can play out the scenario literally and theoretically a few times. When the rolls are good and you have a plan of action you can steamroll the entire area.

When they aren't however, if you eat a crit, whiff attacks that would otherwise remove the combatants constantly and the momentum swings in the enemy's favor you will slowly get snowballed without the crutches of all of the items. Even purely by numbers, if you reduce the game to the basest stats each of the NPCs have and remove the busy work of surfaces, bombs, consumables/ect? It gets a LOT more manageable on pen and paper.

I'd love to see this stuff in Divinity Original Sin 3, NOT Baldur's Gate. They need to return to form or trust that the PHB/Monster Manual CAN be fun if it follows the formula first THEN is tweaked afterwards.

Not sure what goofy one shots or campaigns you're getting up to, but I wouldn't dream of giving level 1~4 characters what is essentially a high level loot hoard fifteen minutes into the game. Magic items severely unbalance party dynamics and when I showed my own groups this screenshot.

"..Someone thought this was a good idea?" Was what one of my players said. I think it sums up the general confusion pretty well.

I'd actually be in favor of tweaking more of the cantrips so they can keep up with firebolt and ray of frost. Looking at you sacred flame. It's more fun with acid melting gear, fire setting things ablaze, ice freezing the ground, it makes them stand out more as different spells and not just different colors of magic damage. Maybe we can use cantrips like control flames and shape water to interact with surfaces more. I like adding complexity and having a more varied tool set.

Actions, I support separating jump and disengage. I'd like to see something where the more use the tadpole, you can unlock Illithid traits that let you choose one of those actions and now it'll be a bonus action, among other possible tadpole perks. Meanwhile the rogue will have cunning action off the start so it still feels like its role, and everyone is getting opportunities to expand their tool set at a price.

I didn't have as much difficulty as you with my playthroughs. I'd maybe use 2 consumables in a hard fight. Would long rest after multiples encounters even with my wizard. I think it was 3 long rests after doing everything outside the goblin fort. They do throw a lot of loot at you though and I'd be happy to just search an area of containers with an investigation check and pickup a few things. I wish there were more story consequences for taking too many long rests. That druid ritual seems to just go on forever

Everything else I agree with you and it's valid wanting the game to be closer to source material. Some of their changes just make for more enjoyable gameplay for me personally

Veteran D&D player here, and veteran BG 1/2 player, but not a D:OS player.

1. Mage hand: Mage hand is definitely overpowered.

2. Too many surfaces: There's simply way too many. Surfaces shouldn't be a thing cantrips make, or if the cantrip makes a surface, that's all it should do. I could see using firebolt as an attack spell or to target the floor, getting variety (I'd totally let a player do that in my games if their target was standing among something flammable). Every large fight having archers already on high positions with multiple alchemist fires or acid flasks is a huge drag. The abundance of ranged attackers and their tendency to go for the back line is difficult for balance too.

3. I'm assuming you're talking about the enemy rangers here? I didn't mind this too much, but I think it would be better if the animal companions were there at the start of combat and not summoned right into the midst.

4. I've long used advanced humanoid enemies. Bog standard enemies out of the book get boring after a while. I cut my teeth on 3E, so the idea of NPC classes (adept for spellcasters, warrior for combatants) makes perfect sense for me. They create dynamic fights. The PCs are special, they don't have to be the only Wizard in the world to be special.

5. Action economy. Disengage and Hide need to be actions, you're very right about that. I'm okay with jump being a bonus action, but it shouldn't come prepackaged with disengage. It's too easy to jump around the battlefield. That should be a rogue's thing. Also, did you notice that they didn't give the Thief Rogue their +Dex to jump distance bonus? I was really looking forward to that on my Rogue. (On rogues, not being able to proc sneak attack on my off-hand attack really nerfs melee rogues. Being able to apply poison as a bonus action automatically, and not just as a Thief Rogue ability with Fast Hands, is potentially broken).

And I fully agree; there's too many archers in every fight.

I'll add my own; I don't like that food heals HP.

Okay. Then will you buff physical attacks to keep up with the increased power from magic? And then buff higher level magic to be more powerful than the lower level magic?

There is a danger of creating an "arms race" to keep up with buffs in one area.

Exactly this, if you buff cantrips so much they become OP, the fix is to nerf them not buff other things to keep up with them because all that does is lead to everything in the game having to be buffed to keep up, which leads to everything just feeling OP. I know we're supposed to be powerful adventurers, but buffing everything to keep up with the OP cantrips would just turn us into gods.

I think having too many sources to abuse shove can actually be an oversight in this case. Anyone who thinks buffing cantrips even more is a good idea clearly doesn't know anything about balance in videogames. I'm more on the side that they should go easy on the million barrels, throwables and arrows instead of removing the surface effect entirely. There are MANY spells that can get this surface effects too. Hell, even Dragonborn has multiflavored breath in 5e so it's gonna be the Lizards all over again but with different damage types.

I like the surface effects to a point. I don't think they should be removed entirely because they do add a certain flair and more tactical choices to combat, but they need to be toned down quite a bit. Like making cantrips not cause surfaces effects, save that for higher level spells or have cantrips only create a surface if they are cast directly at the ground instead of targeting a person. Cantrips are OP at the moment even without surface effects included (seriously, a cantrip that reduces AC by 2? WTF Larian?) so removing or altering it should be fine. The thing about having so many surface effects is that they don't work with D&D's action economy the way they did in DOS2, and Larian needs to realize that. In DOS2 they weren't a problem because melee characters had abilities that let them teleport and skills were all on cooldown timers instead of limited slots. But that isn't the case here, so they need to be adjusted accordingly. I can't put out a massive area of fire with a Create Water spell if I'm out of spell slots Larian, and nobody wants to waste all of their spell slots using Create Water just to get past a stupid amount of fire anyway.

A quick side note here, the shove ability needs to be toned down a bit as well, while it is hilarious watching someone get shoved 50 feet off a cliff, it's also stupid. I shouldn't be able to beat an entire encounter just by Sparta kicking people off cliffs.

Thanks for all the feedback and discussion guys, trying to keep looking at this with an open mind as Larian is still probably in one of the better positions to get all of this right.

Don't really need to. Plus, they already did with adding weapon based actions that recharge with a short rest. The chip damage from cantrips doesn't compare to high amounts of damage I was getting with my rogues and fighters. I was getting 10-20 damage with 90% or higher chance with physical attacks, while cantrips were more about 5 points of damage while being in the 30-60% chance to hit range. That little 2 points of damage from the fire surface was great for finishing of low enemies and ray of frost was useful crowd control. If I needed damage I could spend a spell slot on thunderwave or magic missile. Other than cleric and the thief subclass, all the classes felt equally powerful to me

Great post.
Not just scrolls, items in general as in all Larian games are WAY too plentiful. With too many magical items out there, nothing feels special. That first COUNTRYSIDE merchant you meet has MULTIPLE +1 magic swords, axes, daggers, the whole lot.
A bit more "history" in unique items would also be great! (as in BG2)