Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback LARIAN hates casters even more than J. Sawyer.

Love & Rocket, where I became convinced Sigourney Weaver should be a voice actor. Great episode

clerics are still low level OP casters in tabletop 5e, also with BAB gone they can basically hit like a fighter all campaign long save for ability improvements and other fancy features

Divine casters are good on TT (druids included) but this game, you at moment can't even reach lv 5. Lv 5 is the MINIMUM for a evoker to have some destructive power(fireball, once per rest)

Asking for the opening scenes to be boring is quite a criticism.

If you want to play a weak character try playing a Rogue - every class is a Rogue now except the Rogue. You don't even get expertise on skills. It's like someone at Larian DM'd for a Rogue, saw how good they were in D&D5 and they want revenge.

1. I think the BG3 is terribly fun and I really liked the escape the ship starting point.

2. J.E. Sawyer is brilliant and he's a nerd's nerd. He's right about FR lore, tattoos, hand built bikes, armor, hand painted backgrounds, walls of text, isometric view and a dozen other things I'm forgetting. But, otherwise, the OP is right -- J.E. is wrong when it comes to wizards. IWD2 / PoE were really about "this is how I would have made BG3".

3. Spell casting is nerfed. Sacred flame / hold person / sleep / fireball are all nerfed in BG3 because the enemies have 2 to 3 times the HP they are supposed to have according to the monster manual. Why use sacred flame instead of a bow? The bow is much more likely to hit. Why have a wizard at all? Arcane tricksters and eldritch knights have the same advantages without the disadvantages.

Wizards are glass cannons. Only BG has reduced the power of the cannon but kept the glass.

And this is even worse with Gale because he a) eats the best stuff and b) kills your party when he dies.

Now I do have a possible answer to why they made Gale the way they did.

I'm predicting that Gale will eventually get an "idol of resurrection" type ability where you send him into the front lines just so he can die --- which is fun if you liked that part of DOS2 tactics where dying was often a good party strategy but not so great if you want to play a D&D wizard.

This is a real problem. Spell damage has not been adjusted to keep up with HP bloat. For example, several posters have pointed out how Sleep does not have the same utility in BG3 as it does in 5e because of this.

Bugs and exploits aside, this just extends the time it takes to get through combats. And seeing how combats are handcrafted by Larian, unlike the great number of placed and random encounters featured in BG1 and BG2, perhaps this is by design.

I don't find the idea of "intentionally doing something suboptimal for fun" as a good reason to not balance things. It's not like half-orc wizards are all that bad though, as the difference between +2 and +3 isn't that big at levels 1-3, and it opens for picking a +1 Int feat at level 4. Or bad at all, since they get Intimidation for free, dark vision and the option to stop at 1 hp instead of 0 once per long rest. They are a tad unconventional because people see the +2 to strength and the flavor says they are inclined towards being warriors, but they are perfectly viable as wizards. Which is funny, because now we have a good example of a supposedly suboptimal combo that doesn't only work well, but have a set of unique strengths that helps set them apart.

It's almost like the half-orcs are a reasonably well-designed pick, with some bonuses geared towards specific playstyles and other bonuses that are universally useful.

Balancing things so that every class and race option and combination is viable without there being gamebreakingly powerful options that overshadows everything else sounds pretty good to me. Nothing needs to be exactly the same, but advocating that everyone should be in the ballpark is better than having a few useful options and the rest is just there.

Because It is a ROLE PLAYING GAME. Not an min/maximizing Pun Pun Building game.

Low int runs on Fallout 1/2 aren't optimal but are fun
Nosferatu runs on VtMB are not optimal but are fun
Trying to be a drwarf mage on arcanm is not optimal but is fun.
Solo challenges for BG1/2 aren't optimal but are fun
(...)

This excessive focus on balance is why modern games has so many inconsistencies between LORE and MECHANICS.

Probably said that eons ago but ppl just kept parroting how great sleep was as a disable lol.

It being a roleplaying game isn't an excuse to have imbalanced mechanics, especially in games where several players might be involved. Like BG3, given it has multiplayer. I really don't see the problem of giving, for example, each race both something to incline them towards a specific playstyle and something that is universally useful if they choose to play against the archetype. Like the half-orc, as I explained above. And I really don't see why keeping some classes from completely dominating others is such a bad thing either. That isn't about min/maxing, but rather about not punishing players who want to play something unconventional because they think it sounds fun.

That being said, the 'game' part of roleplaying game indicates that we're talking about a collection of challenges meant to be overcome. Challenges designed with some guidelines on how powerful one can expect the player to be. Making it so that certain playstyles trivializes said challenges, while others can barely make it past, just seems like bad game design to me. The difficulty of a challenge should center around the player grasping and utilizing the options at hand.

Of course, if we're to talk about lore and mechanics interacting, I would say that keeping some playstyles from dominating the others certainly makes more sense of most fantasy worlds I'm familiar with. It really doesn't make sense that, for example, clerics in 3e aren't ruling everything, because it doesn't take many levels before no one else can compete. The more powerful something is, the more work has to be put in to explain why it isn't used to take control successfully. Off the top of my head, only the Dragon Age series has addressed this imbalance within their world in mainstream fantasy as of late.

In fantasy, you can (and should) ask what the people with knowlege and resources (rulers, wealthy merchants, priests etc.) are doing to protect themselves from...
... mind control and magical charm.
... invisible thieves and assassins.
... teleporting thieves and assassins.
... cheap materials disguised as expensive materials (lead to gold etc.).
... shapeshifters or magical disguises.
... creatures unkillable by non-magical weapons.
... semi-immortal creatures, like liches.
... giant monsters, like dragons.
... undead rising from their graves.
... ghosts floating through the walls to kill you.
... etc.

I'm sure people could add a million more things that would have to change in a great many fantasy settings for magic, even magic that isn't necessarily stronger than just stabbing someone, to make any sense with the lore as it is presented, let alone the absurd power it is sometimes meant to have. If you want to complain about inconsistencies between lore and mechanics, there are way bigger problems than "magic isn't overpowered enough" or some such to be addressed.

I would like it if they made this game balanced more like the tabletop

-The goblin that summons the worg, I believe, is supposed to be a ranger, rangers should not be able to summon their beasts as an action, the Goblin should already have (or be riding) the worg
-HP inflation of basic enemies makes a number of spells weaker, if we had proper rest mechanics, casters would feel really weak...
-We should have proper rest mechanics, 2 short rests per long rest, long rests separated by resource using combat. 5e's balance all rests around resource management.
-The AI murderously and suicidally goes on kamikaze runs for casters every combat, it makes a tank feel pointless, no DM runs monsters like this

I agree that the AI tends to target casters in the back WAYYYYY more than they should, esp when you have your main-line fighter upfront and in their face.

Exactly. And if this were D&D the AI would be right -- take down the caster before he puts us to sleep or hits us with a fireball.

But as thing stand the AI is wrong, the real threat is the Weapon Master is cleaving them down or the thief that can stab 4 times.

Casters are underpowered in bg3?

Could have fooled me. If you pop a potion of speed you can cast 3 spells per turn vs 1+cantrip in pnp. But yeah guess they really hate spellscasters!