Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Remove Height and Backstab as Sources of Advantage/Disadvantage

+1 to include altern options

+1 on this suggestion.

The height and backstab advantages are borderline ridiculous in this game and needs to be re-evaluated.

And real life eludes many too.
Do I not gain an advantage if I am on higher ground than you?
Do I not gain an advantage when I come up behind you without you knowing I am behind you then stab or hit you?
Do you not have a disadvantage when trying to hit someone on high ground?
Do you not have a disadvantage due to your limited line of sight?

I could go on and on and on........

Point 1 - Having high ground would give you longer range and make it harder for the enemy to reach you, but wouldn't do much to increase your chance of hitting them except let you shoot over cover. Those are all advantages that don't have to break the game by being advantage, as in the mechanic that allows you to roll twice to hit and taking the greater number.

Point 2 - Yes, you would. That is why 5e has a stealth mechanic which allows you to hide as an action, or a bonus action as a rogue, and gain advantage on attacks against a target that doesn't know where you are.

Point 3/4 - There is already a 5e mechanic based on this. The target is either in 1/2 cover(half its body is obstructed from the attack) and gains a +2 to its AC and DEX saves, or 3/4 cover(3/4 of its body is obstructed from the attack) and gains +5 to its AC and DEX saves.

All those scenarios are explained in 5E ruleset. There was no reason to modify them since the ruleset is by most accounts, pretty balanced. Larian got lazy and decided to copy paste their combat mechanics from DOS (from what I am reading since I never played that series). Is BG3 based on 5E or not? If it is, then the current mechanics need to be changed. If it's not, then let the fan base know so they can avoid this game like the plague.

What 'fanbase' exactly, the Larian DOS2 fanbase or the DnD 5e literalist fanbase? Yeah.....

As I said, if Larian wants to make DOS3 then by all means they should, it's their right. But they should stop pretending they are trying to follow 5E rules. If you want DOS3, there's nothing wrong with that. Then call this game DOS3: Baldur's Gate. But if they want to emulate 5E rules, then perhaps they should try to follow the rules and not mess with mechanics that break the balance.

So, in all this discussion of removing the inherent advantage of backstab, which is in essence, sneak attack, many of you are ignoring 5e ruleset and simply seeking to neuter the bread and butter of the Rogue class, as well as a possible Assassin class?
Enlighten me if I am mistaken here.

I must have missed the part of dice rolling in DoS2 and wow I didn't know DnD had physical and magical armors to break thru before you could damage health. Since its not true to DnD nor DoS2 might as well call it Dragon Age Larian since its only a 4 party game...

This constant name calling of DoS3 is so dumb.

What is so wrong with getting advantage from high ground and backstabs? Its literally in all senses an advantage. I support Larian fine tuning it, especially the Super Mario jumping all over the place. But to call it out as evidence that its the bane of the game's existence. Like come bro, take it easy. A lot of wonky and cheese stuff they need to fix but its not the end of the world for the game.

Backstab = advantage if you attack the back of ennemies.
Sneak attack = rogue feature that deal additionnal damages if he attack with advantage.

Backstab isn't equal to sneak attack.
No one is supposed to have such easy advantages, whatever we're talking about the rogue or any other classes.

Seems pointless to try and argue the merits of these rebalancing tweaks - those who don't care about 5e rules and imbalanced gameplay...simply don't care. height and 'backstab' are just symptomatic of poorly thought out mechanics which give way too much benefit - there are many others too.

Hopefully larian doesn't ignore the voice of the hordes of 5E players (like me) who bought this game because they wanted a 5E experience that accorded (mostly) with the rules they know and love. The 5e ruleset was touted heavily in this game - it can't simply be neutered/ignored, especially with no good reason. Importing a slew of DOS mechanics (I played DOS1/2 and enjoyed them, but I don't want that experience this time around) breaks balance on so many levels. People have offered constructive critiques on why (for a 5E game) these are bad, and ways of compromising on a soluton to try and keep both 'camps' somewhat happy. But many don't want anything to change, even though this EA and also about testing out gameplay ideas. Weird.

From a discussion 4 years ago:

If a creature is unseen, it gains the benefits of "Unseen Targets & Attackers", on PHB p194-195. If you're attacking a creature which can't see you, you have advantage on the attack.

There are option rules about "facing" in the Dungeon Master's Guide, p252, but that would be up to your DM whether they use those rules or not.

The "Sneak Attack" feature of the rogue (PHB p96) is meant to represent backstabbing, sucker-punching, and other ways of getting in a more powerful attack on a creature who is distracted or unaware.

If you want to backstab someone, the game doesn't specifically have a "backstab someone facing away from you" rule.

But, according to the Sneak Attack rules, you can get the extra sneak attack damage in a number of ways:

If your target doesn't see you, then you have advantage on the attack,

OR if you have advantage on the attack for any other reason,

OR if another enemy of your target is within 5 feet of it.

If you can get sneak attack damage for any of those reasons, you can narrate what you're doing as stabbing them in the back.

Was this individual wrong?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/5fqey2/hiddenbackstab_atks_on_5e/

The facing rules, DM and D&D in general doesn't consider that someone can freely and without any risks jump over the head of someone you're engaged with.
It also don't consider that if you suceed this difficult movement, the creature won't turn and/or will totally forget you're presence.

In other words : You won't be considered "unseen".
Even if you suceed such jump in D&D, you'll probably have an AOO, have to roll dice with really bad consequences if you fail and you also probably won't have the benefits of an invisibility potion of an attack when you're hidden or of an attack against an overwhelmed ennemy (surprise/flanking).

Nothing is wrong about getting advantages when your opponent is surprised/when you're unseen. Considering that you're unseen with this homebrew rule is only possible because TB is a static system in video game and at the moment, this rules totally exploit the TB system. This could work in P&P but only because there is a DM in real time.

Everything else you talked about are the rules of D&D and the RAW looks realistic in a story point of view without the need of a realtime DM. Considering that an attack in the back is always a surprise is not the same.

Just for the exemple, Solasta deal with this pretty well.
If a creature see you, even if you walk in its back during your turn the creature know you're in it's back. If you want the advantage, you have to be out of its eye's field of view AND hide (potion, hide behind a wall, hide action, spell,...)

This is the correct take.

The problem is not the advantage gained by height. Its the ability to jump several yards in full armor, weapons and backpack from the stand like super Mario. Remove that and shove entirely and height advantage is harder to get and balanced then.

I am not so sure about that.

Jump should cost movement, not an action or bonus action. And shove should also cost an action.

Advantage (in the sense of DnD 5e rules) is simply too strong, even more so when the enemy on the lower ground gets Disadvantage as well. It's waaaay too much!
Larian should just remove that mechanic of Advantage/Disadvantage by height alltogether. If they want to somehow give you an advantage (NOT Advantage as in DnD 5e rules), a simple +1 or +2 Bonus to your attack roll is more than enough.

Well what you are talking about is heresy to DnD 5e fans. LOL

In previous editions or today known as pathfinder system it was all about different bonuses to make thinks more realistic by taking many different situations into account before rolling the dice.

But math like +1, +2, -4, +2 resulting in a +1 bonus to roll was tooooo complex and mind harassing for the people. So 5e was born and the advantage system.

that is simply not true
Cover, for example, gives you simple Bonuses to AC & Dex saving throws. And is a part of the normal rules (PHB, Chapter 9: Combat).

As far as I know, WotC just tried to reduce such calculations, not get rid of them alltogether, because for some people it would slow down combat rolls.
In a computer game, there would be no need to ditch such calculations/mechanics, because of obvious reasons. And in my opinion: Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a great game! Love the complexity.

That pretty much nails a point. I think 5e has its strong points as it is the perfect system for speeding things up at the cost of depth. And for pen and paper there is an audience for such speed up. In a Computer Game where all the calculations are made instantly by the computer the 5e edition is simply a bad choice.

It’s also totally ironic because if speed up is the point why making it turnbased to slow it down. Just to reduce party size to 4 to speed up turns again.

I really love the visual presentation of bg3. Along with excellent sounds and great VoiceOver. But the game design is a real mess.

On jumping, I'm going to quote directly from the 5e PHB, of which I have a dead-tree copy (and note that some liberties, specifically concerning run-up, probably had to be taken due to how the game (and really any point and click game) handles movement). Emphasis theirs, typos mine:


Basically, there are no rules concerning weight in jumping, and, horizontally, at least, even a basic character has superhuman jumping skills, if Larian stays true to 5e (though, unless everyone is less than 2 1/2 feet tall, you shouldn't be able to jump over enemies, per RAW and I'm fine with that). This is to keep everyone on the same page. I'm not sure how it translates in-game, without some way to measure jumped distance, but...

As to shoving, yeah, it should take a regular action, instead of a bonus action, again, per RAW.

As a side note, there are no rules about height difference (terrain-wise) in the PHB, so I guess Larian is on its own there. I wouldn't mind the advantage/disadvantage being turned way down and limited to accuracy, but I feel there should be a difference between being several feet above your enemy and several feet below.