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Originally Posted by DragonSnooz
Originally Posted by Zenith
And the answer to that is to blame Larian for making so many classes and spells and companions sheer, weak traps, and making consumables and martial classes so comparatively strong.
This is by far my biggest complaint about Baldur's Gate 3. It is anti-fun to have martial classes + consumables overshadow classes and spells.
BG1 nor BG2 were not different in this aspect. In BG1 archery was more powerful than other playstyles, with many magical arrows available, including explosive arrows that acted like fireballs. And I'd say archery was even easier there: you could use one character as a lure while the rest of the party were taking shots, because enemies wouldn't switch targets. At the same time, some melee enemies (including the final boss) hit like trucks, making it difficult to keep melee characters alive. Same in BG2, only this time it was mages that were far more powerful than other classes.

Balance between classes was never part of the BG series. It's just that enemies were much dumber (for lack of better word) in the originals making combat easier.

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Baldur's Gate 1/2 melee classes weren't always fun because they had nothing to do in the previous versions.
The fighter of D&D5 has features and things to do.

But if you remove melee classes their zone of control they're not really usefull anymore.
AOO are a joke because of easy disengage and ennemies can often cross a part of your body so you can't really block any path/door/ladder - whatever, the battle arena aren't designed for such purpose.

Melee in the old games were usefull to control the battlefield. In BG3 they're just running everywhere because the majority of ennemies aren't melee and/or can teleport/jump/ranged attack with potions/...

Last edited by Maximuuus; 15/03/21 07:39 AM.

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Originally Posted by Zenith
Wish I would have youtubed my kill on Bulette to put this crap to rest. If you get it to spawn on you with Minotaurs, you had crap luck, and you do what you do when you fail dialogue rolls; you reload the save.

The Strength Save on his leap is completely negated by potion of giant strength or being an elf character with a DEX of 18+ by that point.

You pulled the one time you got cheesed by a mob to complain about it being OP. If you spread your team before he burrows out the leap may at best kill two people.

And in that video no scrolls were used. In his other videos he's killed the minotaurs without the flameball trick or push tricks. His battle wizard just hammered down the first minotaur in 1 turn and then the other one died shortly afterwards since they are weak to hammers.

And if he can learn where the mob will spawn, so can you. I learned the mob doesn't spawn unless you walk down the ramp of the minotaurs while it's there. Otherwise it spawns at the Sussar tree. Instead you walk the highroad to the Myconid colony to the right side and Bulette never spawns.

Not that it matters where he spawns if you bothered to kill the Minotaurs beforehand. All you need is a single Lazel Frightening Strike to CC him to death.

The point isn't even his cheese, it's that he killed the mob in two turns with a single character. You have 4 to do the job.

He took that cap from the first vid I posted in this thread. It's not luck, it's repeatable. I do it to get an easy bulette in my spore army at lvl 3. Bulette has 4 spawn locations. If you skip the battle at the bottom of the ramp, or it burrows, and you go up towards the minotaurs you'll find the one from the vid cap, and there's another one, up a stone ladder, across from the stairs to the Arcane Tower.
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Originally Posted by Maximuuus
Baldur's Gate 1/2 melee classes weren't always fun because they had nothing to do in the previous versions.
The fighter of D&D5 has features and things to do.

But if you remove melee classes their zone of control they're not really usefull anymore.
AOO are a joke because of easy disengage and ennemies can often cross a part of your body so you can't really block any path/door/ladder - whatever, the battle arena aren't designed for such purpose.

Melee in the old games were usefull to control the battlefield. In BG3 they're just running everywhere because the majority of ennemies aren't melee and/or can teleport/jump/ranged attack with potions/...
I agree that fighters were boring in BG1 & 2, but I don't think they were all that useful in controlling the battlefield. Summons and aoe spells were far better at this job. Summons, because they were disposable and BG1 had no limit on how many you could have. Sleep in BG1 would let you win many of the early game fights (and is also why that mage at the Friendly Arm Inn was probably the most successful assassin in the BG saga laugh ). Web was even more powerful in BG1 & 2 then it is in BG3, because anything caught in it would be "held", and "held" characters would be auto-hit.

If you wanted to powergame BG1, there wasn't any reason to take on melee characters. A party of archers with a thief for traps & locks, and a bard for wands & scrolls is all you need.

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Originally Posted by Zenith
and Hold.

Frightening Attack is the single most reliable CC setup in the game, and 2H fighter is the most powerful class by far, especially if supported by a Bless bot cleric supplementing damage with Inflict Wounds.

Yeah, about that. Larian overpowered Menacing Attack, too. Or rather the Frightened condition that it inflicts.

The Frightened condition does not make enemies flee and trigger AoO's. It gives disadvantage to attacks and stops you from moving closer to the source of fear. So a Frightened Bulette or Minotaur would still keep fighting, just with a disadvantage for one turn. And they would not give you free attacks on them.

So, another house rule that breaks balance. Not much incentive to pick Eldritch Knight when Menacing Strike from Battlemaster just single handedly destroys all the toughest enemies. Boss fights are generally why you have a Wizard in the party who can CC and peak perform, but funnily enough they don't have anything as powerful as Menacing Strike in its current form. Best they can do is DPS with the OP magic missile amulet, which is also rather backwards for their intended low level role.

Maybe Larian just hates 5e and would rather make a DOS 3.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
Originally Posted by Zenith
and Hold.

Frightening Attack is the single most reliable CC setup in the game, and 2H fighter is the most powerful class by far, especially if supported by a Bless bot cleric supplementing damage with Inflict Wounds.

Yeah, about that. Larian overpowered Menacing Attack, too. Or rather the Frightened condition that it inflicts.

The Frightened condition does not make enemies flee and trigger AoO's. It gives disadvantage to attacks and stops you from moving closer to the source of fear. So a Frightened Bulette or Minotaur would still keep fighting, just with a disadvantage for one turn. And they would not give you free attacks on them.

So, another house rule that breaks balance. Not much incentive to pick Eldritch Knight when Menacing Strike from Battlemaster just single handedly destroys all the toughest enemies. Boss fights are generally why you have a Wizard in the party who can CC and peak perform, but funnily enough they don't have anything as powerful as Menacing Strike in its current form. Best they can do is DPS with the OP magic missile amulet, which is also rather backwards for their intended low level role.

Maybe Larian just hates 5e and would rather make a DOS 3.


It doesn't matter if Eldritch Knight had a more powerful version.

The problem here is that getting spells to land at all reliably is HORRENDOUS. As I said in the previous page, started Githyanki patrol fight at lv4 with Gale stealthed and joining the fight with an opening Poison Ray after prebuffing him with Mystra's Blessing from the unique staff, up in the garrison wall with elevation advantage.

Care to guess the hit chance of Poison Ray with bless and elevation advantage on an 18 intelligence wizard? 60%. 60 fucking percent. Lucky for me, it hit and did decent damage. But it's AGGRAVATING getting a single action per turn and having that single action after waiting for 4 enemy actions to miss half your single actions.

What makes Battlemaster and dual wield builds so much better than casters is that they actually get to land their skills reliably. That's the real issue. As a caster you do less damage, have limited resources, have no viable CC because their hit rates are abysmal, and you have no equivalent of backstab or action surge to give you two attacks in a row, one of them a CC attack that also does damage.

The casino style Dice-A-Rama RNG fest of this game is what's completely ruining the combat experience for so many classes.

Hell, I could write a novel on how often Sacred Flame does nothing and when it does it's for 1 damage.

Or the trash can Concentration system. Nothing more wonderful than wasting a spell slot on bless or the single cast per day Cleric Divine skill or the Druid's entangle only for a single ranged strike to break concentration, and just like that POOF wasted spell slot.

No interesting combos like Entangle+Moonbeam or Entangle+ Spike Growth.

The Supposed Thorn Whip cantrip which is meant to deal with elevated enemies, too bad it fails more than 60% of the time when aimed at elevated enemies due to vertical disadvantage.

These combat rules SUCK.

When am I going to pick a Land druid with anything but Coast? NEVER, Misty Step is too valuable for that vertical advantage to land spells and dodge attacks. It's such a ridiculously restrictive combat system eliminating combat style and choice.

RNG based combat and totally binary outcomes of Miss or Hit down to dice rolls are fine for a tabletop game with friends laughing around at the ridiculousness of it, but UNACCEPTABLE for a proper single player RPG experience.

Last edited by Zenith; 15/03/21 08:13 AM.
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Originally Posted by Zenith
When am I going to pick a Land druid with anything but Coast? NEVER, Misty Step is too valuable for that vertical advantage to land spells and dodge attacks. It's such a ridiculously restrictive combat system eliminating combat style and choice.

RNG based combat and totally binary outcomes of Miss or Hit down to dice rolls are fine for a tabletop game with friends laughing around at the ridiculousness of it, but UNACCEPTABLE for a proper single player RPG experience.
Well, all I can say is that my impressions from the game are quite different. My drow druid had land circle underdark for roleplaying reasons, as I generally don't powergame my characters or companions.

I think it depends on how you approach playing spellcasters. If you are faced with larger eneny groups, then the simple economy of having limited actions gives the advantage to aoe spells. If you have a druid & a wizard, then you can quickly have two overlaying difficult terrain spells, for example. And you can use thunderwave or the void bulbs (I've noticed you can buy them in Underdark) to push & pull enemies into aoes.

My druid wasn't a very powerful character, but I've found very useful to have in a party. I haven't run into a single combat situation that was not doable, even though I don't bother with things like poisons or dipping.

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Originally Posted by Zenith
What makes Battlemaster and dual wield builds so much better than casters is that they actually get to land their skills reliably. That's the real issue. As a caster you do less damage, have limited resources, have no viable CC because their hit rates are abysmal, and you have no equivalent of backstab or action surge to give you two attacks in a row, one of them a CC attack that also does damage.

...which is because of Larian's "backstab" and "high ground" house rules.

All spells that target saves are nerfed hard because they can't benefit from backstab or high ground which have now become the default attacks. Larian was afraid players would hate missing so much they mutilated the system and failed to account for many of it's aspects.

When encounters are being balanced around the fact that Lae'zel can "backstab" every turn and Menacing Attack is many times more powerful than in actual 5e, of course everything else will suck.

This whole problem starts and ends with Larian changing the rules where the rules didn't have to be changed. They change one thing and create two problems. Then they fix one of the problems with something that isn't a real fix and create more issues. Solasta proves this. It's more faithful to 5e and proves the actual rules are much more fun and balanced in a video game than Larian's "fun changes". And it feels the tactics are real in Solasta rather than "move behind" and "go high" in BG3.

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To return to the original topic, enemies definitely heal outside of combat now. I recently tried to weaponise Gale's necrotic death aura against the tomb raiders in the ruined temple of Jergal (by smashing in the roof to gather them all in the corridor and then letting Gale go down there and die in the middle of them) and to my disappointment, as soon as Gale was dead, combat was over, and his aura started damaging them... They started healing themselves up. And kept healing themselves. Unendingly.

There's a chance the bulette has similar ability to just heal itself right back up to full health outside of combat.


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Originally Posted by Dexai
To return to the original topic, enemies definitely heal outside of combat now. I recently tried to weaponise Gale's necrotic death aura against the tomb raiders in the ruined temple of Jergal (by smashing in the roof to gather them all in the corridor and then letting Gale go down there and die in the middle of them) and to my disappointment, as soon as Gale was dead, combat was over, and his aura started damaging them... They started healing themselves up. And kept healing themselves. Unendingly.

There's a chance the bulette has similar ability to just heal itself right back up to full health outside of combat.

It has that ability, but it only uses it while above ground, not in combat, and not leaving combat. So, if you were in combat with it, and you manage to flee, or turn invisible, it won't use that ability. It will just burrow and regain some health that way(like it always has.) If it was previously damaged, and emerges from the ground a second time, and you manage to get out of range or turn invisible before it enters combat with you, then it will use that ability, and heal fully, before burrowing back into the ground. It also heals during a long rest.

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Originally Posted by Zenith
Originally Posted by 1varangian
[quote=Zenith] and Hold.

Frightening Attack is the single most reliable CC setup in the game, and 2H fighter is the most powerful class by far, especially if supported by a Bless bot cleric supplementing damage with Inflict Wounds.

Yeah, about that. Larian overpowered Menacing Attack, too. Or rather the Frightened condition that it inflicts.

The Frightened condition does not make enemies flee and trigger AoO's. It gives disadvantage to attacks and stops you from moving closer to the source of fear. So a Frightened Bulette or Minotaur would still keep fighting, just with a disadvantage for one turn. And they would not give you free attacks on them.

So, another house rule that breaks balance. Not much incentive to pick Eldritch Knight when Menacing Strike from Battlemaster just single handedly destroys all the toughest enemies. Boss fights are generally why you have a Wizard in the party who can CC and peak perform, but funnily enough they don't have anything as powerful as Menacing Strike in its current form. Best they can do is DPS with the OP magic missile amulet, which is also rather backwards for their intended low level role.
...

No interesting combos like Entangle+Moonbeam or Entangle+ Spike Growth.

The Supposed Thorn Whip cantrip which is meant to deal with elevated enemies, too bad it fails more than 60% of the time when aimed at elevated enemies due to vertical disadvantage.

These combat rules SUCK.

While it does bother me that frightening attack is OP. Thorn Whip is currently coded as melee weapon and gets backstab, rather than having to deal with low/high ground silliness.

It's still weird that Thorn Whip gets backstab, and highlights how ridiculous backstab is at the moment. There does need to be a premium for backstab (like requiring a dex weapon).

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Originally Posted by Dexai
To return to the original topic, enemies definitely heal outside of combat now. I recently tried to weaponise Gale's necrotic death aura against the tomb raiders in the ruined temple of Jergal (by smashing in the roof to gather them all in the corridor and then letting Gale go down there and die in the middle of them) and to my disappointment, as soon as Gale was dead, combat was over, and his aura started damaging them... They started healing themselves up. And kept healing themselves. Unendingly.

There's a chance the bulette has similar ability to just heal itself right back up to full health outside of combat.

Something else is triggering the full heal if the numbers posted are correct. In this last playthrough, the bulette showed up 4 times and escaped with less than 50 HP in all but one of those instances, and in the 5th battle where I finally cheesed it and did enough damage in a single round to keep it from burrowing, it was back to full health at the start of the fight. That's with zero camps, and only the short rests. The only thing I can think of is that I did transition areas and go to the Kua-toa shrine.

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The answer to everything in a Larian Game:


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Originally Posted by JDCrenton
The answer to everything in a Larian Game:


Now I know what I'm going to do with all of the farts that I barreled up in 2020.

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The reason why you can't beat it normallly or in a D&D legit way is because balance is nonexistent and they want you to use their homebrew gimmicks in almost every encounter. Encounters are designed around the gimmicks instead of the class system and ruleset. This has been clear to the majority since day 1. Which is why they don't delete the infinite stealth cheese either.

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Originally Posted by Grudgebearer
Originally Posted by ash elemental
I've had the bullete appear in both the minotaur and hook horror fights. It sure seems to get around. laugh

But what I've found interesting is that it can turn other Underdark denizens hostile, I assume by catching them with its aoe. In the minotaur fight one of the minotaurs went from attacking my party to attacking the bulette (and killed his companion in the process). The same happened in the hook horror fight; they went after the bulette once it appeared. They actually helped my party defeat it.

I've not been "lucky" enough to have it show up in any other fights. In this playthrough, I did have a hook horror jump all the way from the branch of the tree, land on Gale and Wyll killing them by doing 50 damage to each of them, and take zero fall damage itself.

Larian's meddling with creature abilities has utterly broken all semblance of balance. If the final product is anything close to this EA in terms of cramming DOS mechanics into a shell of DnD, then I'll most likely wait till someone mods in some more accurate rules before I attempt to play the full version.


Lazael's tadpole power tends to kill her and her teammates as well since if you pull a target off a wall to you, the target basically lands on you and does 20+ damage to you and your party assuming it doesn't also make them Prone. This environmental cheese needs to be dealt with.

First of all, the damage from falling off elevation needs to be removed so boss encounters aren't utterly trivialized, and damage to targets the mob lands on needs to go as well, or Lazael's tadpole power be fixed so the target always lands in front but not on top of party members.

The only benefit that should come from tossing a target off elevation should be to make them Prone.

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Originally Posted by Zenith
Originally Posted by Grudgebearer
Originally Posted by ash elemental
I've had the bullete appear in both the minotaur and hook horror fights. It sure seems to get around. laugh

But what I've found interesting is that it can turn other Underdark denizens hostile, I assume by catching them with its aoe. In the minotaur fight one of the minotaurs went from attacking my party to attacking the bulette (and killed his companion in the process). The same happened in the hook horror fight; they went after the bulette once it appeared. They actually helped my party defeat it.

I've not been "lucky" enough to have it show up in any other fights. In this playthrough, I did have a hook horror jump all the way from the branch of the tree, land on Gale and Wyll killing them by doing 50 damage to each of them, and take zero fall damage itself.

Larian's meddling with creature abilities has utterly broken all semblance of balance. If the final product is anything close to this EA in terms of cramming DOS mechanics into a shell of DnD, then I'll most likely wait till someone mods in some more accurate rules before I attempt to play the full version.


Lazael's tadpole power tends to kill her and her teammates as well since if you pull a target off a wall to you, the target basically lands on you and does 20+ damage to you and your party assuming it doesn't also make them Prone. This environmental cheese needs to be dealt with.

First of all, the damage from falling off elevation needs to be removed so boss encounters aren't utterly trivialized, and damage to targets the mob lands on needs to go as well, or Lazael's tadpole power be fixed so the target always lands in front but not on top of party members.

The only benefit that should come from tossing a target off elevation should be to make them Prone.

I don't know if you have to go that far to actually fix push. If you make it an action instead of a bonus action, and give it more true-to-rules results in that you are pushing them 5 feet with a success, not 15. If they are at the edge or if it was a scenario where you stealthed up behind them, then sure, add some bonus feet since they are unprepared, but in combat it should be a 5-foot shove out of threatening range. Then if they want to get more fancy, put trip in that drops a character prone instead of pushing it 5 feet away. https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Combat#toc_43

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Originally Posted by Grudgebearer
Originally Posted by Dexai
To return to the original topic, enemies definitely heal outside of combat now. I recently tried to weaponise Gale's necrotic death aura against the tomb raiders in the ruined temple of Jergal (by smashing in the roof to gather them all in the corridor and then letting Gale go down there and die in the middle of them) and to my disappointment, as soon as Gale was dead, combat was over, and his aura started damaging them... They started healing themselves up. And kept healing themselves. Unendingly.

There's a chance the bulette has similar ability to just heal itself right back up to full health outside of combat.

Something else is triggering the full heal if the numbers posted are correct. In this last playthrough, the bulette showed up 4 times and escaped with less than 50 HP in all but one of those instances, and in the 5th battle where I finally cheesed it and did enough damage in a single round to keep it from burrowing, it was back to full health at the start of the fight. That's with zero camps, and only the short rests. The only thing I can think of is that I did transition areas and go to the Kua-toa shrine.

You should load to a save before you fought the Bulette and try to repro it. It's not transition. I just did the Kua-Toa fight and back and it had normal burrow hp recovery. I also fast travelled to Overgrown Ruins, ran to Ethel's killed her, and went through the portal to Underdark and it had normal burrow hp recovery.

edit:Loading from an autosave while I was above ground and fast travelling back to underdark, It had a recovery of 52.

edit2: Yep, that's the bug. It's not using its full recovery ability. If you load a save you made outside of the main area of underdark, it gets an extra burrow.(I saw 8 to 60 and 8 to 67)

If you load that game, go to underdark, leave underdark, create a new save, load it, go back to underdark, it gets two extra burrows. (8 to 85 and 8 to 84)

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I dunno, Bulette pisses me off with that burrowing from the begining, so now i just trigger him, and then hide ... and wait for him to dissapear. laugh


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I've just entered the Underdark at level 3 via the Zentharim hideout elevator, and am facing two minotaurs that I have to get past. I try to shoot one from above the cliff out of hiding with chill touch, because the spell SPECIFICALLY STATES THAT ANY CREATURE HIT WITH IT CAN! NOT! REGAIN!!! HITPOINTS!!!!

Minotaur instantly heals back to full.

Larian. Fix your shit. This is not D&D. This is a farce!

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