Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback How we can know the Sawyerism on spells with lv cap = 4??

My behavior is fine.

To reiterate, I had something to say, and I said it. The comment I was responding to was, in fact, strange.

This board is full of people vehemently disagreeing with one another.

I said "soft."

Is "soft" a word that gets someone banned? That's goofy.

Soft.

ETA: the suggestion that I can't judge someone else's playstyle while they *actively and aggressively* judge mine is patently ludicrous.

So, you recognize that SoD doesn't break the game. Just forces you to be more cautious right?

But all SoD is irrelevant. BG3 will be 5e and we will not see spells like wail of the banshee even if the game was 2e. A lot of people also complained about will'o wisps but the game first thows one against you. Then few, so if you saw then casting chain lightning, is a good idea to have protection against electricity, right? As for medusas, is a "workaround" solution. There are no flesh to stone spell in the game(despite stone to flesh existing and having zero usage).

Is ironic to think that if Medusas appears on BG3, they will be less dangerous than BG1 low level Basilisks... Cuz takes a lot of time and you need to fail multiple saves to be petrified. Meanwhile on BG1, not only you are insta petrified but also, can't learna stone to flesh spell due lv cap and the scroll of stone to flesh costs an fortune.

You misunderstand me.
My point is that kingmaker is a deadly environment even though it does NOT use such spells 99% of the time.

I am not sure if the basilisks from BG1 are a good example.
Or to put it better, they are a good example why I agree with Niara.
I could only beat them by distracting them with the animate dead spell (skelletons are immune to petrify and enemies go after the first thing they see)
There are a few stone to flesh scrolls, but I do not remember any protection from petrification spell. (its been ages)
Hoping to win the save or having to reload is not fun.
In BG1+2 its game over when your main char goes down.

Imo BG1 did enemy design better than either BG2 and PK. In BG1 you generally can find warnigns about how dangerous an area is. In the case of basilisks there are petrified statues everywhere. And there are a few solutions available: the protection from petrification spell, a potion with the same effect, summon undead spells and finally, if you arrive on that map without any of the above, there is a friendly ghoul that can practically solo all the basilisks on the map for you.

PK and BG2 don't bother with warnings in the case of some dangerous enemies, while giving them practically instakill abilities. PK devs ended up backtracking and toned down some enemies, that many players complained.

I'll jump into this for a second and contribute.

Personally I don't have a problem with OHK type spells/creature abilities. In fact I fully expect and hope we DO have to deal with at least some. After the Spectator fight I will be seriously let down if the late/end game does not feature a full on Beholder battle at some point, which has more than 1 type of potential OHK if I recall correctly.

While I would not call for it as part of the main quest line, I'm fine with a side quest or extra fight that is next to impossible except under specific circumstances or that only has a limited number of strategies that can successfully overcome it. I fully believe that there should be some things in the game(once more probably not as part of the main quest for the sake of the average player) that are just there for bragging rights and a really tough fight.

D&D has a ton of kewl monsters and enemy types and I'd like to see as many neato ones as possible(preferably as close to the monster manual as possible, hint hint Larian please stop homebrewing the creatures)...even if they are a bit higher up the food chain than ourselves.

Not in 5th, that's kind of the point; it has strong abilities which can definitely kill you, but it does not have SoD abilities or OHKs. The ablities it does have which can result in disintegration, petrification or death at all multi-faceted enough that they still feel fair, despite being dangerous enough to cause party wipes very easily. Here, have a look (from the base beholder block; it gets three rays on its turn, and then three more during the round as legendary actions):


The instant kills are still gated behind reducing you to 0Hp as well, though they are heavy damage for their CR and can very easily do so, especially if they come out part way through a fight. Even the petrify, which would normally fall into the SoD category is mitigated by the fact that it takes a full round to happen; you get a second chance at the save, but more importantly, it can be removed or blocked more easily during that time, or players can respond to help ensure their companion saves the next time.

I agree with you in so far, that I liked BG1 more than BG2, especially regarding this topic.
BG1 is a low level game. It is dangerous because you have only a few hit points and its not easy to find or afford magic equiment.
I also liked that the whole world was one map, only split into several maps because of technical limitations. But thats a different topic.
I do not remember an enemy that throws instant death spells at you, but I am not sure.

BG2 uses many such spells and its game over when your main char dies. Except for those players who played those games 100 times already you cannot know where to find what enemy and what this enemy can do. You also cannot cast all protection spells all the time just in case you run into something dangerous. This means you can only find out stuff by fighting this enemy, finding out how it killed you (not easy, when you see the game over screen you cannot look at the log to see what spell has been used), reload and maybe rest to select different spells.

As for Kingmaker: As I have told before, the world is very deadly even though very few enemies use such abilities.
The biggest problem would be the wild hunt enemies. Each of them does try to paralyse the whole group every round. According to PnP rules you should be immune for 24h if you resisted it once. Only blind fight or freedom of movement can protect you from it, but unless you read a guide you will probably die a few times until you find this out. According to PnP rules, blind fight should not prevent gaze attacks, it should only reduce the penalty if you fight with closed eyes to avoid the gaze attack.

Thanks Niara, the beholder looks very deadly indeed.

20 years ago the IE were the only big western RPGs I have played, so I had nothing to compare them with.
Many rules made no sense for me, but I had no alternative.

Now that I have played many other games, I think that 2E is in many regards a totally unintuitive mess.
I have no experiance with 1E and 4E, but I would prefer a 3E or 5E game over 2E any time.
DnD 3E (or Pathfinder) is a nerds wet dream and everybody elses nightmare.
5E seems like a good middle ground between having some complexity and being relatively easy to understand the basics.

I do not play PnP, only computer games. This means I do not have any emotional connection to any system. It is just a set of rules, nothing more and nothing less. I do not care if the rules are based on a PnP system or if they were invented for this computer game (like Dragon age orrigins or PoE).
When I complain that BG3 should stick closer to PnP rules it is because:
- The game uses the licence so it should use the rules
- The changes from Larian just feel wrong for me, such as jumping behind enemies for advantage or flame arrows cause a fire surface, even if they miss the target.

I think PK was quite unintuitive for both Pathfinder players and those new to the system. I remember there were a lot of complaints (when the game came out, later I didn't follow the forums anymore) from Pathfinder players, because the devs have elevated stats on enemies and those familiar with the system didn't expect the stat bloat. So they were struggling with combat. Meanwhile I didn't know about Pathfinder before playing that game, so I wouldn't know what stats & abilities an enemy was supposed to have anyway. On the other hand I've found building characters difficult, because the many bugs and also misleading tooltips made character creation a guesswork.

The more I read stuff, the more I am happy that I am not a PnP player.
I compare a computer game to other computer games and the most importent thing is if I enjoy playing this game.
I can understand that some PnP players will always complain because some changes need to be made when creating a computer game.
You cannot include some spells, skills or stuff that PnP players can do because a) technical limitations (like no flying in a 2D game) b) the efford to include this is very high compared to what you gain c) it could break the game (the devs want to tell a story and some events need to happen that the story makes sense).

Regarding Kingmaker, I finished it recently on normal difficulty in turn based mode and it was great.
I do not know the PnP stats and abilities so I had little to complain as a computer game player.

In the worst case the result is similar to Realm of Arcadia. (trilogy from 1991,1993 and1995, based on the dark eye)
The game uses exactly the PnP rules, skills and spells, all of them.
This means that up to 80% of spells and skills are totally useless or extremely situational.
some examples:
- You could spend points in the riding skill but you could never ride anything.
- There is a spell to purify bad food, but there is no bad food in the game
- Some skills/spells are only useful 1 or 2 times over the whole trilogy, but then you can die if you fail them. There is exactly one situation where you need the "banish ghost" spell, but when you do not have it then you are stuck forever. Not on the critical path but still frustrating. There is one point where all party members have to pass a swim check or die as part of the main quest (you have to escape a pirate ship).
These games were great because they implemented lots of interesting stuff you do usually not find in a computer game, but it was almost impossible to finish them without a guide because half of the skills/spells are totally useless while there are some others you absolutely need to have to finish the game at all.
They fixed this in Drakensang (also based on the dark eye) by implementing only skills and spells that have any use in the computer game. I can understand that some PnP fans were angry that they removed some options and changed some other stuff, but I think that most players are happy that the game removed all of the trap choices that are totally useless.

Well, PK went through a LOT of patches & hotfixes after it came out, it really felt like an early access version on release.

edit: Actually, I've played Drakensang the River of Time, so now I remember that system. Lots of stats.

Yep I have to agree, while that can still put you in a bad spot, it certainly isn't as big of a deal as they use to be. /Sadpanda

Freedom of movement is your friend. And is not a hard spell to obtain in scrolls or for your cleric.


The devs made earlier fights far easier, due people crying. Kingmaker was the unique game which I ever pre ordered and my first run lasted till Pitax due a infamous bug. A lot of harder encounters(most of then optional) got far easier. And most complains about the combat are nonsensical like "I can't use a sword against an insect swarm, I need to use torches or bombs".

As for flying, Solasta did implemented flying and M&M VI, a 1998 game had flight but kingmaker could at least made flying creatures immune to ground based effects/spells.

But about the ruleset, the best ruleset depends a lot on the game which you wanna to play. For eg, Dark Sun on 4e or 5e would't be the same as Dark Sun on 2e. Dark Sun is a harsh dying world and we need a ruleset that reinforces it. Just like the realms of dread on 2e and on 5e are completely different experiences. Ops, there aren't realms of dread on 5e, only Barovia.

That said, there are so many spells and effects which Larian can't get feedback with lv cap = 4; and 5e is far more low level friendly compared to 2e, paladins only start to get their spells as lv 9 on 2e. This and the fact that modern game market is extremely obsessed with balance, means that the chances of high level gameplay is near zero.

And 5e also suffers from the "oblivion effect"(for those who don't know, oblivion is infamous by having enemies soaking hundreds hits at higher level due hp growing far more than damage), where the hp growth is extremely greater than the damage growth. For eg, on 2e a wizard at lv 5 will deal 5d6 damage with fireball. At lv 10, 10d6, each new level adds d6 to most damaging spells, meanwhile his hp grows by +d4 until lv 9. After it, grows only +1 hp per level and the con mod was far smaller. So higher levels maintain his lethality. Meanwhile, on 5e a wizard gain d6 + CON MOD hp each lv up and spells gain no damage. In fact, a fireball deals 8d6 damage on 5e as a 3rd tier spell. While a freezing sphere deals 10d6 damage. For 3rd tier spell to 6th tier spell, the damage growth with the hypotetical evokation spell is miserably 2d6. Meanwhile, the wizard from lv 5 to 11 gains 6 * d6 + CON MOD. Even with 0 con mod, the hp gain is 3x greater than the damage gain.

And monsters grow up on hp per CR in a much exponentially way. High level encounters on 5e can take dozens of rounds.

Many DM's also complain that is hard to challenge a party on higher levels. Because nothing is a threat to theyr near infinite hp pool. I love high level but for 5e, we should focus more on mid level.

I'm curious where you're getting this idea from...

A mid to high level fighter can easily put out upwards of 80 damage a round without burning any resources; a 6th level disintegrate does an average of 70 damage.

Compared to this, even demon princes and deities don't really get much above 300 hit points; There are literally 7 sub-CR20 creatures with more than 300 hit points, and most of them are end-of-module bosses.

Even if you push the bracket as far as it will go, with the most recent high cr books, there are only 14 creatures, ranging from CR 22-28 that break 400Hp, and again, they are almost all end-of-module major bosses.

A party of 4 that are at a level to challenge such creatures without getting chunked in seconds are going to have damage outputs that might see them doing ~200 damage a round as a group, or more.

None of these battles will EVER take more than three or four rounds at most, one way or the other.

Edi: I'll add to that, your wizard with 14Con will average about 110Hp at level 20; That's barely more than one round of damage for most of the above-mentioned creatures, not including legendary actions/reactions - grab a stock standard ancient Blue at that tier; its breath weapon deals average 88 damage. A Marut deals 120 damage to a single target a turn if it wants.

High tier battles are fast and brutal in 5e, the exact opposite of slow and drawn out.

Niara hit the nail on the head; none of what SorcererVictor is saying sounds at all like 5e. It's very rare for a 5e battle to last more than 3-4 rounds. Recently, I had one very long battle that lasted about 6 rounds; we killed a god.

The only complaints I've heard from DMs about having trouble challenging players have been in games where players get to rest too often, so they come into every battle fresh with full health and all of their spell slots. If you actually make players ration their resources over the course of a full day's worth of activities (with urgency in the story so they can't get a full night's rest 2-3 times a day), challenging them isn't an issue and suddenly players have to make interesting decisions about which abilities are worth using rather than reaching for the big guns in every fight.

Nothing to add but can I just thank you guys for this oddly fascinating read at 6am? ;- )

Well, you are assuming that :
1 - Everyone will land hits and spells which is unlikely
2 - Ignoring legendary reactgions
3 - Ignoring that a group VS one enemy is a rare occurrence. A young dragon will probably have Kobold servants which will rush to help his master.

As for hp, here is how much hp, an lv 20 Dark Lord necromancer called Meredoth has according to AD&D book domains of Dread - just 50 hp. His stats on spoiler.

And the strongest magician who ever lived, the unique guy who managed to become to take a God's place with only magic, which forced Mystra to restrict every magic spell past lv 9. He could surpass epic magic by 2 levels and treat the fabric of reality. A lv 41 archwizard, a genius among genius, the best of the most powerful macocracy who ever existed, who learned how to use magic as a baby. This epic magician has incredible 74 hp According to Netheril: Empire of Magic book - Page 114.

His stats on spoilers.

If Karsus was ported to 5e with 19 CON, he would have 41*(d6 + 4) hp, maximizing his rolls, he could reach 410 hp.

Niara has already said everything.

SorcererVictor, you compare an enemy from PnP 2E with a computer game in 5E.
Thats comparing apples with oranges.
Saying "If I bring character X from game A into game B with the same stats he would be totally over/under powered" makes no sene.
EVERY computer game changed stats compared to PnP, even your beloved BG1+2.
Its OK if you like other systems more than DnD 5E, but BG3 will be based on 5E, thats a fact.

Yes, because that is what you do when calculating average output comparisons between creatures and party members. It's not 100% realistic; it's comparatively sound, which is why we do it.

More precisely: you presume that all attack rolls hit, all saves are failed, all save-out-by-round effects are saved out of by the second attempt, and all AoE damage spells, such as sphere, lines etc., hit two additional targets. That's the math that it is conventional to use when doing statistical comparisons. Is this news to you? This has been the standard way of doing things for many years.


No I specifically mentioned legndaries where they were relevant - as part of the enemy's potential damage output calculations.


Yes, because you were talking about individual characters and claiming that 5e suffered individual hp bloat, causing combats to last into dozens of rounds. It doesn't, and that's incorrect. It's disingenuous for you to make claims like that when they are clearly and demonstrably counter to actual evidence; what is your motive for doing so?

I don't care about your older edition specific figure comparisons; I care about you being factual and honest about the edition that you're denigrating and slandering; you currently are not being so. For example, if we talked about porting your legendary 2e figure to 5e, we'd talk about doing so in the exact same way that we're talking about everything else here... we don't maximise his hp, we state his expected average hp at max level... which in a 5e translation is 150Hp, if we take him to the level 20 cap, or 225 if we give him an extra 10 hit dice to emulate level 30, or 300 at level 40 - which, I must point out, is not a thing in the bounded statistics of 5e as of yet. Leveling past 20 does not give you ANY more hit points at all in 5e; you gain other perks, but you don't gain further hit dice. In 5e, a theoretical 'level 40' wizard has 20 hit dice, and with 19 con averages 150hp, the same as a level 20 wizard...

Regardless of which you choose, it doesn't sound as though you are actually very familiar with 5e at all; most of your information is incorrect (there are many domains of dread in 5e, for example. We only have published adventures for Barovia, as the most centrally famous, but the lore that's been published in other official 5e books supports and even explicitly calls out the existence of many others). It sounds much more like you've developed a negative opinion of it from afar and are repeating the fallacies you've adopted without any substantiation.

So, the question I'd ask would be, if you are set and determined to down-talk 5e, and are not prepared to acknowledge where your information is false, or to revise your position on any part of the conversation as a result of those falsehoods... then what is your actual purpose here? Why have you decided to do this? What's your motive, and what do you get out of it, and how can we help that in this discussion? I'm genuinely curious.

Edit: As part of this I suppose I'm motioning that we're a little bit off topic from the origin of the thread, which I think was the complaint that we can't realistically know or test anything about how the high level magic will work in BG3 while we're level capped... with the underlying understanding that high level magic has a major impact on the game, and we really should have a means of testing and providing feedback on it before official release; this, at least, is a sentiment that I don't entirely disagree with.