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I've seen some people say the game is too hard, some classes are too weak, etc. So I wanna give some feedback on this

My first playthrough was a warlock and I didn't really know what I was doing so my build sucked for combat. But I was able to talk or sneak my way past a lot of the tough fights so it was fine. Fights I had to take I could manage as my companions were strong enough. My character was more of a talker than fighter, this was to be expected. Also, if I paid a little more attention to what does and doesn't work well on a warlock, I would've had an easier time. You shouldn't be able to win all fights with whatever you first come up with (unless it's easy/story mode difficulty).

My second playthrough was warrior. I thought I would have a tougher time with a straight forward fight your way through character seeing how I got an easier way out last time by being cunning. Turns out I really just had to jump behind enemies together with Lae'zel and smack them in the back while the other 2 just provided some support. It was very straight forward. Once you get action surge and superiority dice, damage output goes really high while you have defensive options with bonus actions like rally and second wind. I even beat the fight at the end of Lae'zel quest for EA at level 3, that was a nice challenge. I think warriors are a little too strong even, but if jumping or backstabbing gets toned down, it'll be more balanced imo. In any case, if you're having trouble, I'd just go for a simple, straight forward warrior build. I found it very enjoyable too.

For my 3rd playthrough I went with rogue and well, now it's Astarion and I backstabbing instead of Lae'zel. This is not as straight forward due to rogues not being as tanky, but the damage output seems higher. Apparently it's possible to repeatedly sneak attack enemies to death out of combat or something, but I generally just went for a single good hit to start the fight and that often didn't connect because combat starting cancels the attack which seems to be a bug. But with backstab and bonus action attacks (dual wield / vampire bite) it was easy enough to handle myself.

In summary, the overall difficulty seems perfectly appropriate. However, some things are currently too strong (jump, shove, barrels, maybe backstab?), some things might be too weak, some things are bugged which affect the difficulty. These should be addressed but overall difficulty seems just fine.

I also appreciate how there are generally easier and harder ways to do things. Do you want to face enemies head on or perhaps use that side path to get past? A lot of the fights are optional, or can be arranged to be easier somehow through story options. I like it when I see that.

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For me much of the difficulty came from some aspects of 5e not being explained. ( I don't have DnD experience)

I completed a full playthrough without knowing what advantage/disadvantage actually did.

I had a whole string of terrible rolls on my character while my friend seemed fine and it turned out that wearing armour that you are not proficient in is far worse than just not getting the +2 proficiency bonus - giving you disadvantage on basically everything.


Despite those issues, managed to get through the EA fairly easily. Once I figured out that wearing things you're not proficient in is horrifyingly bad, I had a much easier time.

Seems I've played about 3-4 runs with different setups and never felt the need to recruit a 4th team member, I think it's really not too bad once you understand the systems.

The only bit that had an issue for me was the minotaurs and big spider, but I think that was because I lacked the action economy only fighting them with two characters when they could multihit. And I didn't attempt to ignore them which is possible, I wanted to take them out.


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Originally Posted by denhonator
In summary, the overall difficulty seems perfectly appropriate. However, some things are currently too strong (jump, shove, barrels, maybe backstab?), some things might be too weak, some things are bugged which affect the difficulty. These should be addressed but overall difficulty seems just fine.

I also appreciate how there are generally easier and harder ways to do things. Do you want to face enemies head on or perhaps use that side path to get past? A lot of the fights are optional, or can be arranged to be easier somehow through story options. I like it when I see that.
Hide as a bonus action for everyone is also very broken. If you really try to abuse stealth with ranged + hide + line of sight you can solo the entire EA.


Necromancy is just recycling...
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I think you are on to something Xeiom, it does really seem like there's an issue with the rules not being explained well.

Take modifiers and abilities. For instance having an odd number in an Ability is a bad idea. No one explains this to you, and the "suggested stats" and even party characters have poor stat distribution.

Same with advantage/disadvantage, and other to hit modifiers you might get don't really get explained well. So I can see I have a "green addition" to my to hit chance, and it states "backstab" but it doesn't say if this is advantage, or just a +1 to hit or anything. Especially "house rules" like elevation would be nice if the game told you what actually did.

But yeah, all in all the combat difficulty is quite decent once you learn the game. Sadly the prologue does a bad job of really teaching you the game rules.

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Originally Posted by denhonator
I think warriors are a little too strong even, but if jumping or backstabbing gets toned down, it'll be more balanced imo. In any case, if you're having trouble, I'd just go for a simple, straight forward warrior build.

The PnP game sees a lot of people unused to the system complain about how Fighters are over-powered. It's an easy opinion to form when they are in full plate with Heavy Armour Master feat, killing enemies with a single sweep of their greatsword and soaking up the damage with their huge pool of hit points. Our group includes such a Fighter, a halfling in fact, and the GM keeps trying to beat the character down and generally fails.

The GM is relatively new, and was almost wiping out the rest of the party with ever-increasing challenges aimed at the Fighter but inevitably affecting the rest of us. Playing a wizard (a wizened hag living alone in a rude hut), I asked if I could demonstrate to him how he was taking the wrong approach. With the agreement of the rest of the party, therefore, my new wizard (new to the group, she was created at 10th level to fit the rest of the party) was introduced as a possible potential enemy and they surged forward to capture her.

One 'Dominate Person' on the low-WIS saving throw Fighter later, and the party were in chaos while my wizard cackled madly from a safe spot hiding with Greater Invisibility.

The point of this is that all characters have their weak spots, and it is not generally that some are overpowered, but that the challenges they are facing are ones they are designed to take on. That's the core of the D&D party system - you need characters who can overcome all manner of challenge.

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Originally Posted by Aurgelmir
Take modifiers and abilities. For instance having an odd number in an Ability is a bad idea. No one explains this to you, and the "suggested stats" and even party characters have poor stat distribution.

Further to that, it is actually good to start with an odd number in some stats. Later on, when you get to the appropriate levels, you get to add 2 points to those stats. If they are odd, you can raise two stats at the same time to levels that gain better bonuses.

This is something that people new to D&D need to know.

Last edited by Sadurian; 20/10/20 12:14 PM.
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Originally Posted by Sadurian
One 'Dominate Person' on the low-WIS saving throw Fighter later, and the party were in chaos while my wizard cackled madly from a safe spot hiding with Greater Invisibility.

The point of this is that all characters have their weak spots, and it is not generally that some are overpowered, but that the challenges they are facing are ones they are designed to take on. That's the core of the D&D party system - you need characters who can overcome all manner of challenge.


Good point. As it is, I feel way more concerned with direct damaging attacks and surfaces than WIS/INT saving throws. There are harpies which can lure you but I didn't perceive a large difference in saving throws between my characters. You'll just need to break their concentration with someone

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The game definitely needs more tool tips. They way it's designed, it trips up both people new to D&D, and people who are D&D veterans. With Wizards able to learn healing spells from scrolls, and having cantrips that are a million times better than the Cleric cantrips, clerics are pretty obsolete. The stealth dance, and the Repelling Blast on Eldritch Blast lets Wyll and a player warlock Kite forever. Between free jump disengage, bad stealth AI, and conditions procing on cantrips even on a miss, I genuinely believe that the best party setup (if you don't want to play Donkey Kong with exploding barrels) is two wizards, and two warlocks.

It'll get even sillier if we get Hexblade Warlock, Polearm Master, and Sentinel. Setup an ice rink with the Wizards. Eldritch Blast things to force them to the far side of the rink. Anything that succeeds the check to walk over the ice gets smacked by one of the two polearms, and loses it's move. Then Blast them back over the rink again.

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Originally Posted by Sadurian
Originally Posted by Aurgelmir
Take modifiers and abilities. For instance having an odd number in an Ability is a bad idea. No one explains this to you, and the "suggested stats" and even party characters have poor stat distribution.

Further to that, it is actually good to start with an odd number in some stats. Later on, when you get to the appropriate levels, you get to add 2 points to those stats. If they are odd, you can raise two stats at the same time to levels that gain better bonuses.

This is something that people new to D&D need to know.


Odd Numbers are never good.
Unless you are in a situation where you:

1. Know you are taking a feat that gives +1 to a stat
2. Get odd numbers because you have lots of bonuses to stats (Human can get this situation)
3. Don't use points buy, and have to deal with the stats you get.

You get very few Ability Score increases in the game. Another thing the game should tell you. You starting distribution is very important because of this.
BG3 is level 1 to 10, meaning you only get an ability score increase at lvl 4 and 8 (unless you are a fighter who also get's it at level 6)
That is a total of 4 extra ability points.

What stats you want high really depends on your class. But in general most classes want at least two stats high.

BG3 uses points buy, where each ability score costs more the higher you want it. 15 in a stat costs 9 points, 14 costs 7. Both 15 and 14 gives you a +2 modifier. So if I take 14 in Constitution instead of 15, I can actually set another stat to 10. 10 being the +0 modifier point. Going from 13 to 14 also costs 2 Points, This means I could have one ability at 13 and one at 15, or two at 14. In one build I have a +1 and +2 modifier, in the other I have two +2 modifiers. And it cost me the same number of points buy.

At level up, I can put one point in the 13 and 15 and increase them to 14 and 16. Lot's of improvement. But I could take my two 14 stats and increase one to 16. The result after level up is the same, but with two at 14 I have had 4 levels of +2 modifiers in two stats.

And at lvl8 I can take that 16 to an 18, or that other 14 to a 16 too.

So unless I have "points buy to spare" and can bump an 8 up to a 9, or I know I'm taking a feat that gives +1 dexterity or something, I never put a stat at an odd number.
Odd numbers all the way.

To me a race is good when it gives you a +2 to your core ability and +1 in another. That means I generally can get those two skills to 16, and then my third valued stat to 14, while still not going 8 or 9 on the rest of the skills.








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Originally Posted by Paimon
The game definitely needs more tool tips. They way it's designed, it trips up both people new to D&D, and people who are D&D veterans. With Wizards able to learn healing spells from scrolls, and having cantrips that are a million times better than the Cleric cantrips, clerics are pretty obsolete. The stealth dance, and the Repelling Blast on Eldritch Blast lets Wyll and a player warlock Kite forever. Between free jump disengage, bad stealth AI, and conditions procing on cantrips even on a miss, I genuinely believe that the best party setup (if you don't want to play Donkey Kong with exploding barrels) is two wizards, and two warlocks.

It'll get even sillier if we get Hexblade Warlock, Polearm Master, and Sentinel. Setup an ice rink with the Wizards. Eldritch Blast things to force them to the far side of the rink. Anything that succeeds the check to walk over the ice gets smacked by one of the two polearms, and loses it's move. Then Blast them back over the rink again.


Based on a lot of feedback I don't think those rules changes will actually make it to the final version. The scroll learning seems to be a mistake, and "Everyone get's cunning action" get's harped on a lot by people.


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Tooltips, info texts, tutorial stuff, better presentation of what is going on overall are definitely needed. But it's understandable those aspects are somewhat lacking in EA. After all, once they change mechanics, those can become obsolete.

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Difficulty seems appropriate WHEN you play by Larian terms: advantage spree by high ground & backstabs every single turn. Dishing this feature every possible single turn will prove in the future where the crowd control spells strikes more often that they are not as useful as they used to be. Turns out that the challenge of this game is okay but without the joy of the freedom that we’ve been promised.

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Coming from playing a lot of 5E D&D, I found the game overall to be quite easy and I didn't abuse barrels, stealth, or backstabbing (I wasn't expecting the latter so I didn't realize what it did for 3/4 of the game). I did try to get a height advantage where I could, but found that I sort of needed it for the Wizard/Warlock to have a decent hit rate. My Ranger was always had such a better hit chance (ranger bow option, +1 weapon). As it stands, I'd probably bump the difficultly (once there are options) up one notch to make it more challenging come release, unless something drastic changes. Using jump to disengage and being able to do a regular action was very strong for all my ranged classes. As much feedback has indicated, all the surfaces you can get with cantrips is very strong right now.

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I think the game has spikes of difficulty. Most combat is fine. However, the need for explosives in these difficulty spikes seems more of a debug than intended design. And I don't like the feeling of, ok, time to reload and set the Michael Bay stuff up.

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As soon as you understand the mechanics the current difficulty is pretty easy, in my opinion. Even the difficult fights like Matriarch Spider, 2 Minotaurs 1 Party and the Gith Gang are quite easy as soon as you've identified the solution to them, though of course RNG may require you to reload and try again.

Game is definitely going to need more difficulty levels and/or tweaking before release if combat challenge is going to be enjoyable for the entirety of the game, right now for me (a D&D veteran) the game had a bit of a learning curve in identifying what changes were made to the rules and how that worked it practice and the the challenge very much plateaued at somewhere around "easy" to "very easy" for almost all encounters. And there's not really enough new abilities or spells to change things up so those easy encounters are all handled more or less with the exact same tactics, other than what the location changes up

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I like the difficulty as well. I do die and reload rather consistently but not too much to discourage me and enough to make the win feel better.

However, there are some changes I feel are needed in the game (food shouldn't heal or be limited, rest zones restricted, Jump take an action, etc..) that would make the game harder and would probably require some tweaking to the difficulty.

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Originally Posted by seikojin
I think the game has spikes of difficulty. Most combat is fine. However, the need for explosives in these difficulty spikes seems more of a debug than intended design. And I don't like the feeling of, ok, time to reload and set the Michael Bay stuff up.


There is no need of explosives, you're choosing to play that way. My friends and I were able to clear EA with only a party of 3 and without any cheese. We only wiped once.


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