Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Yes, no problem with having exploding barrels.

I guess I don't really see the issue. You used your advanced knowledge of an encounter to scoop up every barrel in the act to make one big explosion to end said encounter. If someone wants to play their game that way, what's the problem? You aren't forced to use these strategies, but you can to great effect. Providing freedom like this is a great thing, it can lead to pretty awesome memorable moments or memorable fights where you use something out of the ordinary to accomplish a goal. Suggesting they have to balance the game around this is simply untrue, it's a single player game and Larian tends to encourage creative thinking like this. Toning it down seems a little stupid, because again, there is no real issue here. Ultimately DnD rewards creativity, so do Larian games, and this is a great demonstration of just that.

I haven't seen the enemy do this yet, have you? Or do you mean reactive environments, in general? Because if it's the latter, well, that's good that the enemy is smart enough to react to its surroundings and use that against you.

Isn't it dumb ? I mean, a drow priestess quietly going in the middle of a bunch of explosive barrel. Unrealistic to me. But surely the player was creative.

A game that rewards players for planning and preparation? Sounds like fun.

I don't see the harm. You went around collecting every single explosive barrel you could find in the first act and stacked them in one spot. Of course it's going to be a massive explosion capable of wiping out a small goblin army.

The only bad part about this is that you can't hide them and no army would just willingly walk into those barrels for you to blow them up with, but you can just pretend those barrels are buried under the ground.

Yes, on the very first imp fight in the tutorial one of the imps hit one of the purple barrels which succeeded in doing 2/3 of his own hp, 2/3 of both of his imp buddies who had just ran closer to attack my custom character, and a 1/3 of the githyanki companions hp.

Situations like this is why I would like to see it toned down. The AI was not smart to trade 2/3 of his teams hp for 1/3 the hp of one of his enemies.




Toning it down is due to the frequency being to high. It doesn't feel like advanced knowledge and tactics if majority of the encounters are run in shoot barrels, fire everywhere, jump over it and let enemies run through it.

What it does feel like is immersion breaking and unbalanced, and more like DoS2 then BG or DnD.

I do agree and think they could use a bit of an over hull. Making the damage output a bit less extreme would be nice. But even in the EA I am not having that much trouble with it. I used it a few times but the damage to the enemies was not that extreme. There was only one point that really irritated me and that was a particular chest with a load of barrels that killed my entire party. The damage of the barrels is way too much for just casual encounters and for the most part would benefit from not having those barrels in the first place.

My point was that the example in the video is somebody that went out of his way to set the encounter up like that. Somebody is probably going to use an exploit at some point in the game. I also believe that the barrels in DOS where heavier, you could move them but it was an effort (honestly I do not know that one for sure).

That seems like it would be more easily resolved by improving the AI, which is something I expect they'll do. That said, restricting the barrel placement to areas where their presence makes sense would be an improvement, e.g. the trader in the goblin keep and such.

I think initiative rolls can play a big part on how much damage they do. Sometimes when reloading encounters I have witnessed fights play out entirely differently. If the barrel breaks before everyones first turn and then they receive damage at start of turn, and again when they move at all, that is essentially 10-20 damage to every enemy on the battlefield.

It can completely trivialize the encounter, and sometimes its the enemies that do it to themselves. I am not even sure they target the barrels on purpose or if they're AoE effects or path block effects (I have seen ranged enemies shoot into the terrain more then once.)

DoS2 barrels were heavier I think as well, but maybe not heavy enough considering the real life comparison.

Just make the enemies run away from suspicious barrels. Explosives add an interesting tactical element. Giving the player the option to place hidden explosives and do other preparations for the siege would make more sense. Even goblins are too smart to walk into a trap like that.

I was more so referring to the player side of dealing with the effects, my experience when it comes to the enemies has been "welp guess we'll stand and wait for it to burn out... But that's been their response to grease as well.... Cleaver bastards.

That would essentially be one form toning it down. I am not sure it would be enough to make the game feel more like DnD but it is a start.

It feels like the inclusion of so much damage really disrupts the balance of the class system, and as someone stated earlier on this thread can really steal the glory from certain classes who you bring along to cast a fireball or make an explosion.

And you also had to know when and where to use that fireball, not just spam it at the beginning of all battles or every turn. I think it's more than obvious by this point that a lot of ppl wanted to have too much of D:OS in a D&D title.

That's interesting. In my playthrough it seems if they have difficult terrain but are not already standing in it they will avoid it.

However if they're already the effects they just run through it, taking additional damage, falling prone, and even dieing sometimes.

This is also why I suggested toning down the radius of the explosion and surface effects.

Everyone seems to be arguing between improving the AI or toning down the amount of barrels, but really I think both of these needs to happen. The AI needs some updating because I've seen them run through fire and acid in one go just to get a bit closer to the wizard so they can hit him, and I have seen barrels in so many random places. A caravan that was transporting alcohol when it got attacked having a single barrel of firewine sitting around? That's fine, makes sense they would have some and limiting it to only a single barrel keeps people from just nuking the entire encounter in one turn. Now if that same encounter had 3 or 4 firewine barrels, it would suddenly become an extremely short fight as a single firebolt to a barrel would basically end it.

Maybe don't tone down the amount of encounters that have barrels in them, but tone down the amount of barrels in the encounter and make sure it makes sense for them to be there. It makes sense for a merchant caravan to have some alcohol on board, but it wouldn't make sense for an oil barrel to just be sitting on the side of the road for no reason. An encounter should have 1 or maybe 2 barrels max, not 5+ barrels just sitting around.

As for the AI, they need some improvement. I can't think of a single creature that is stupid enough to just go running right into the middle of a giant pool of fire, so why does the AI just straight leroy jenkins their way through every environmental effect in the game just to hit the wizard? They need some tweaking on their targeting as well, maybe have them go after the character who is actually doing to the most damage to them or to the enemies around them rather than just running straight past the warrior who just slaughtered 3 of their friends to go flying ninja kick the wizard in the stomach? I get it, the wizard has low AC and is easier to hit, plus he can be a major threat. But unless he is actually currently posing a major threat by chucking fireballs at the enemies, then every logical thought says to target the person with the giant axe who just killed your friends and not the random dude in the back holding a stick.

Also, are these barrels made of paper? Why do they instantly explode when exposed to the slightest hint of fire? Would a well-sealed barrel even explode without access to plenty of oxygen? What cooper made these that they completely fall apart when, e.g. struck by an arrow? Decent barrels are pretty resilient.

They might feel less ridiculous if they were much more difficult to actually ignite. Maybe give an intact barrel and very slim chance of exploding when exposed to heat? Or maybe the outside of the barrel catches and it smokes and smolders for a minute or two before it has a chance to explode. They would feel like much less of a kick in the shins to wizards if they weren't so reliable.

That's a fair point, making them take a turn or two to actually explode and toss fire all over the place while giving some kind of visual cue that they were going to blow would make it much more manageable.

That's a lot more work even ( Good A.I. ), so unlikely.

Everything in proper moderation.
The mechanic is great to have, just have to be a master designer and know when.

Exploding barrel isn't the problem. The problem is NPCs can't notice the barrels, it's the problem.