Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why are level 4 "red dragons" and "archdruids" even a thing?

How do you want to fix that? This is an ingrained part of the entire system in BG3 which depends more on environmental effects and barrels than actual D&D combat.

I love how this forum is showcasing the inability of people of going over their own personal and limited (because is personal) point of view.

Most of the times just watching something from a single point of view.

I hate levels but not because it makes me feel wowed because my main toon has killed whoever it is. (by the way congrats if you are so skilled to go through the game getting easily rid of any mob you encouter). In my playthrough it was frustrating to see level one mobs killing my party over and over (not only i'm not awesomily skilled but I have a lot of bad luck when it comes to dice rolls, give a game of pure strategy and whether I try until I get the right one or i datamine the internet to find the best strategy to use, give me dice rolls and I will have to reload times and times again until I get not so many critical misses lined up).

Also I, and I'm pretty sure that the bigger part of players side with me, want to have fun, not to apply the same efforts and energies I put on my work, my social life, my chores in my house.

Furthermore maybe I was distracted but I didn't noticed the fact that the levels were always present I had the impression they appeared after you engaged (willingly or by bad luck) the mobs.

Again what Larian could do is add more options in the Gameplay tab so that players can personalize the difficulty, that is addinf options for level tags, fog of war, hitpoints, xp gained, switch of/on advantage/disadvantage for heights and stealth, and number of oil/firewine/grease/water barrels accessible.

This way the game would be able to satisfy both players who want it to be hard and those who want it to be moderate or easy (I love RPG for the story not for the realistic coherence or the battles, that is why I usually play choosing story or easy difficulty).

On the mindfliers I was able to kill the one in the nautiloid, and found that quite weird, ok the him was fighting the demon lord, that I bombed him with the nautiloid barrels, that I procrastinated the battle to allow enough fire damage, still it was weird, the other nautiloid well him was at the edge of death.

Other level 3-4 I met I wasn't able to kill even using barrels and surprise attacks, the minotaurs killed my party many times, the Girth leader tooke damege from an ambush but still was able to run, and his lieutenant gave my party an hard time.

I have a question: what happened to the storyline? If you kill the dragon the Girth can not use it to flee away thus it became possible to kill it. (One of the reasons why I think it's an error or something the programmers didn't considered).

Well, unless you have something specific to complain about with someone in particular, I'd say you can spare us this smug and vaguely allusive condescension.



...Still no idea where this is going, because it hardly seems to relate to the topic at hand.


...We aren't really discussing difficulty levels, though? This is about consistency and immersion.

Your entire tangent is missing the point by a country mile.
The issue I have is not specifically if you will be able to fight the dragon or not, it's a more general dislike with this idea of labeling enemies upfront with an arbitrary level tag.


I never like explicit leveled opponents. That's almost universally true regardless of the ruleset.
Let the context suggest to the player what is too much to handle and be CONSISTENT across the entire adventure.
A wolf should always be a wolf, a troll should always be a troll. None of this crap about having a level 5 troll and then a level 20 one 15 hours later in the game.
I want to feel like a monster's threat level depends of what it is, rather how it's scaled to match my progression curve.

And no level 4 druid should ever be an "archdruid" by the very rules established by the setting and license the game is using. At best "Acting archdruid" would sell the idea better.

If you choose to use barrels and environmental effect. I'm lazy and unorganized and distracter so a lot of times ended up fighting face to face (that means D&D rules were full in controll). Larian don't force the players to take advantage of heights (that by the way in what would conflict with D&D except if we interpret the D&D background as something where being clever, that is making the most from the battleground, just like you know a lot of very famous war generals in History did, you know people like Hannibal, Gengis Khan, the Russian generals that twice defeated big armies just letting winter, a delicious environment tool, do its deed, or the Vietnamites that used at their advantage the tropical forest they knew very well, or the Afghanis that used the mountain environment to cripple the attacks from the Russian army first and now that of the Staters, or the measles infected stuff used by Europeans to weak the autoctones populations defences, is frowned up because I don't knowI can't get a serious explanation on the reasons, if you consider D&D a background with races, cities, politics, cultures, economy, classes and so on to have freedom of choice on how you want to do a battle (strategy or brute force and frontal attacks), where you have enemies hard to fight because of numbers and hp (that are not so enflated).

And seriously, snowflake? From the complains I'm not sure on wich side is the one rilled with snowflakes because I see and I read too much of something easily resumed by the phrase "I like things in this way, I think things are this way you producer have to give exactly what i want as I want it and i fyou don't you are a bad producer. That is. A bad producer who prefers another approach other than the only and rightful rightest one that is mine and mine alone!!! Who cares if you crate a game that should be enjoyable by thousands. Mine and only mine is the rightful rightest way to create a game! Because i played since loong time/I'm very skilled/I know better and other players are just spoiled and snowflaky ones!That is. I said it".

Part of me alsmost doesn't want to fix it, it's funny and resourceful, at least in this one example. But no seriously, killing a dragon this way feels totally a cheese move. How to fix it? Well for one you could make the Dragon at this juncture woundable but unkillable, triggering the Gith to flee or the conversation to go differently. I am not saying that is the best way to do it, structurally I think there are more fundamental fixes to be made, but in this one example it would be "a fix".

Part of me alsmost doesn't want to fix it, it's funny and resourceful, at least in this one example. But no seriously, killing a dragon this way feels totally a cheese move. How to fix it? Well for one you could make the Dragon at this juncture woundable but unkillable, triggering the Gith to flee or the conversation to go differently. I am not saying that is the best way to do it, structurally I think there are more fundamental fixes to be made, but in this one example it would be "a fix".[/quote]

The dragon is just a more extreme example, but the problem is the system itself which depends more on environmental effects than actual D&D combat. You might fix it for the dragon, but then players will just do this cheese to something else. The problems are the barrels, the falling objects, the puddles, etc.

This is divinity people not dnd. Dragons and mind flyers are trash monsters

The dragon is just a more extreme example, but the problem is the system itself which depends more on environmental effects than actual D&D combat. You might fix it for the dragon, but then players will just do this cheese to something else. The problems are the barrels, the falling objects, the puddles, etc.[/quote]

Yep

There would be plenty of ways to fix the opening for these exploits AND keep the systemic rules consistent in context IF Larian cared one bit about doing so.

For instance one eye to "realism" would suggest that no one should be able to move and throw around full barrels that should weight several quintals each as if they were paper holders. And for sure no one should be able to carry several in a backpack.
So they could have their "fun" explosive barrels placed in specific places, without the exploit deriving from amassing large quantities of these. AND make the setting more believable/consistent in the process. Killing two birds with a stone, as they say.

The problem is, I'm afraid, that on the contrary they seem to be rather fond of their "cheese" and perceive it as some endearing selling point that doesn't need to be addressed to any extent.

Ahhh, I mean it would be nice to have the option of my party members being killed in combat alongside me. It doesnt feel dangerous enough currently.

Mh?

Haven't reached a dragon yet but it would be insane dumb if u went against a red dragon (the strongest of chromatic dragons) at level 4. Or even at level 10

You don't really "fight" any red dragons. If you are talking on the ship, that dragon just smashes up the ship, it isn't actually fighting or attacking you.

Technically tiamat is

You are not supposed to fight it, It's just there to look intimidating and then fly away after a cutscene unless the player attacks first.

The problem is that it's hard to take seriously the fact that the game labels him as a level 4 creature.
Then again if you target the red dragon in the prologue he's labeled as a level 1 creature, so it could be worse for the former, I guess.

I 100% agree. Being able to take on such ridiculous odds so early is not very D&D. I can understand it if its some one off side game instead of a serious campaign, but this game is obviously trying to set up a campaign, so to any actual D&D player this just feels disingenuous and kind of insulting. As for the archdruid thing, i can kind of see them get away with it if it was just some arrogant druid running off at the mouth and not actually being an archdruid in reality. This would be especially feasible if they were a shadow druid. But they totally lost me at being able to take on mind flayers at level 2. Seriously? Mind flayers are feared across the multiverse and here are a small group of level 2 nobodies defeating one right out the gate. Its cool that the encounter is allowed to happen, what isn't cool is being able to defeat it so effortlessly.

The dragon I get. Early editions of D&D (back in the TSR days) only went up to level 3, so there were level 3 dragons. But by the time there were druids, there were 20 levels, and an "archdruid" was at least level 15. I'm thinking Halsin isn't an "archdruid" in that traditional sense though, more like he's the best one they have.

Still, Larian does seem to be playing fast and loose with the idea of a level system. It would be better if they either stuck with levels being meaningful, or ditch the leveling system entirely. Personally, I feel an open-world game benefits from a level-less approach, but this is hardly an open world at this point. Maybe it will be after early access is over.

Still, devils, mind flayers, ogres, a hag, a dragon, and a beholder all before level 5? This feels more like a level 10 starting point than level 1.

So the fight with Kaga will be impassable?
Dragons okay, but interfere with the passage ..
I agree that there should be some battles that most likely (but not impossible!) Cannot be won, as is the case with the demon commander on the ship. But players will still try to do it, some will even succeed. The game should take this into account.

Kagha simply shouldn't be labeled an archdruid. "Acting archdruid" or "regent" at best.
Halsin as the "proper" archdruid of the area on the other hand surely shouldn't be a level 5.

Power tuning aside, in any case, the point is that the level shouldn't be a label clearly readable on characters (especially not monsters, that aren't supposed to have levels to begin with) but if we really HAVE to (because as the time goes it seems that Larian hates everything that's good design, somehow) at least that level should make sense in context and be consistent.

The player will still know the level and amount of hp when trying to attack. Why complicate the task?