Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Sven gets it. You can feel his pain.

Pretty much.

Put 2 points in Aeroteurge for every character. Give everyone Teleport and Nether Swap. Congratulations, with a good enough crowd control or mass AoE damage setup, you've suddenly trivialized the vast majority of the game's encounters. The only saving grace is that you have to wait until Act 2 to pick up Nether Swap, while all of the BG3 cheese is available from the very start of the game.

I went and recorded this just now. Note that this is Tactician difficulty, and this is supposed to be one of the hardest non-boss fights in the game due to high ground not being a factor in the battle.


I used to think DOS2 was a very tactical game, but then I came around and realized that it was just wildly imbalanced. It only earned the reputation of being difficult because most people are wildly ignorant about how to utilize the game's systems (or they tackle fights underleveled, the game appears to make your party do about 20% less damage to enemies and enemies do 20% more damage to you just for being 1 level below them), and thus the pedestal that much of the community places it on is beyond exaggerated. Though I can't blame them, a lot of the game's concepts just aren't found in other RPGs.

BG3 just feels a lot worse in this aspect because shoves can be instant kill, high ground as it currently is restrains a lot of your tactics, and it's a lot more obvious what effect both mechanics have on the overall encounter balance. At least you actually have to put some effort into your DOS2 builds and actually learn what everything does to come up with anything remotely similar in that game, which is why I don't really criticize it as much for anything other than the armor system directly contributing to the game's infamous endgame stat bloat.

Sven thinks shove is well-placed mechanism for melee, but I think it isn't. I felt game is too cheesy with shove. DND 5e is not the best mechanism for RPG for sure, but there's a reason to make shove as melee attack, and allow only 5 feat push , because game is about Sword/Magic not the Shoving/Barrel. In the game, there should be tactic-diversity related to circumstance, if shoving and barrelmancy gets the best outcome every time, then why you should choose another tactic?

About Barrelmancy, I think it's the time that enemies actually notices the dangerous barrels is stacked next to them, and make it hard to carry around without bag of holding.

I'll never get tired of reminding this: people approach games for fun, to take a breath after a day at work or school. Usually a lot of them also have social lives so they're not interested into becoming master tacticians with impressive coordination an deep knowledge of tones of gameplay methods.

Samegoes for tabletop games. Once these game, like the video games, spread outside the nerd world (that is outside the world of people who usually was socially inept, and please don't even try to make a fuss I am old enough to have seen the birth of the role playing games and video games and I've benn part of it, without any chance to pass time other than applying themselves in video games or role play, or reading tones of comics, books, school books and so on), they have to change.

Tabletop games furthermore have a chance that videogames don't have: the master can decide what to admit and what not. The DM is literally the deus ex machina who can decide how to make the story evolve. In NpC DnD by vive la dirt league we see a professional dungeon master that plays with professional actors and still he bend the rules and make decitions needed both to make survive all the party (specially Ben Van Lier's Bob that in all the fights, due to the actor's really bad luck with dices, something I can sympathize because my own legendary bad luck, almost dies but miracously is still alive) or make them stop bithering (the "random" dragon appareances), or make sure the objects in the loot are distributed has he planned.

A video game producer has to take account of all of this.

With the aggravance that social media (even if outdated like a forum) amplifie the shrieks of a marginal fraction of the actual ammount of players.


And, again, I repeat this because I see players that evidently consider the game as a second job, complaining about almost everything that make it affordable for people who is interested in the graphic, the storyline, the character development, people who purposelly search the ways to break the game then go to the internet and show the world their big feature and achievement (and then start complainig how cheesy and easy the game was).

Usually these players are the same that complain about immersivity, role playing and so on but are ready to focus only on the fight mechanisms and ready (just to show the world they can break a game and show the world how the game is cheeasy and unbalanced) to completely ignore immersivity and role playing.

The perfect example is the 2 point aerothurge to have teleport and whatever sweep, to ALL the four members of the party. Yep, exactly what role palying is about, to have all your party designed to break the game instead, and obviously immersive, and pretty sure that the one who find the way did it just after they started playing and not after hours of play and active search for a way to easily win the battles (lets be real if you play tactician why did you want to find the easiest way to win? Because to me the arriving point of teleport and swap or sweep or whatever means that the player was annoyed by the tactician level of difficulty and thus searched a way to break the game and still be able to boast about how cheesy the most difficult non boss fight was), or without a quic search on the web of webs.


Finally I repeat my position: this is a ROLE PLAY GAME. You decide how to play. Because it's you playing a role. I don't use barrels, I use shove, I don't care about heights, if I have a way to have an easy win I use it without any shame. Usually I overpower my party before fighting the bosses. That is because I choose that way of play.


That's why I was, am, and will be a supporter of a very detailed difficult tweaking system that let players when choosing the normal or explorer or story level of difficulty to decide if they want to use shove, barrels, height, the quick travel, the mini map and son.

This way the videogame workers can eliminate all of the things that make them consider the game cheesy and enojy their hunt for new ways to break the game, other players like me (who has to put in account the fact that I have a very very bad luck when it comes to the roll of dices) can the same have their fun "cheesying" their way to the end of the game.

And I would argue, as one of the nerds, that folks who want to unwind with a cheesy game for fun have many other fantasy game options at their fingertips. Assassins Creed Vahalla, for example (which I played and enjoyed for something easy and button-mashy to pass the time). However, I came to rpgs from puzzle games like Myst snd Riven, and find complex systems and challenge to be very enjoyable. They give me a sense of nerdly success when I succeed, I reckon. I enjoy these types of games as much as boneheaded ones, but for very different reasons.. which are just as valid as yours.

I think that the folks in this forum have made excellent posts about the issues of designing a game around these cheese mechanics and how they break the balance completely. These options of barrels and shove snd surfaces are not just options…they fundamentally break the other systems.

But I am no expert on the details. Will leave to my fellow nerds who know more about it to explain the specifics. I only know from my playthroughs so far that 1)party composition does not matter in the slightest and 2) your character build does not matter either. You can win any battle with whatever. I find this to be unfun personally compared to deeper the role playing and strategic aspects these types of games normally have.

Also…if they wanted to design this type of laid back game for more “socially adept” non-nerds to play after beers with bros…then why 1) do a Baldurs Gate game and 2) do a DnD based game? They could have just made fantasy GTA or something.

You’ve missed my entire point, Bufo. Larian games were never known for balance. BG3’s balance just happens to be on a whole other tier of nonexistent that it’s difficult to think that it was balanced around anything other than cheese that’s available from the beginning of the game. Again, at least you had to put actual effort into DOS2, which can be pretty fun. But BG3 is just frustrating by comparison, especially because it’s an incomplete adaptation of something that already worked well and the major deviations ARE the primary imbalancing factors.

And if you want to get into the role playing argument, BG3 arguably isn’t in a good spot there either, with one of the primary complaints being how aggravating the companions are.

I am personally lukewarm towards them myself with the only companion I care about being Shadowheart. Probably because when every other companion disagrees with something, it comes off as coming from a position of ego and selfishness rather than a set of beliefs they hold dear, or what they hold dear is their faith in themselves. 4 out of 5 companions being that similar is not a good look. Sure they’re supposed to be evil or neutral, but they just aren’t compelling as a whole package.

I may be especially harsh because I am also playing Pathfinder WotR on the side, and everyone else here knows how I feel about the writing in that game compared to BG3 in its current state. And Larian has had a worse track record in that department, which is why I don’t talk about it much when I have few expectations to begin with.

Especially if they just recycle the whole ‘everyone not in your active party dies after act 1’ thing from DOS2 again, which all signs are pointing towards happening. It was fine in DOS2 with a free form build system, but there would be literal riots in the community if it was repeated here with a much more strict class progression system and a non-excuse narrative.

The Game Developer Conference youtube channel has a talk about D:OS2 given by Swen. At the end of the talk the second person asking a question goes on and on about a something that can be exploited to the players advantage and starts to expand his question to other exploits when Swen, after trying several times, is finally able to interrupt the repetitious questioning with his answer: It's intentional. Swen seemed kind of frustrated there as well while he waited for the person to finish repeating himself. Swen goes on to explain that they leave that stuff in because they know players like "to glitch a game" and he made some other comments about it. So, in the past, that kind of stuff has been added to their games intentionally for the people who like it not for the people who don't. I suspect that's the same reason it's in BG3.

Personally, I don't seem to be able to exploit the gimmicky stuff because I roll characters as I'd play them so none of them have the strength to toss/shove everyone around. What I want in the base difficulty definitely is more money early on and more gear/rewards.

If that is the case, that would be a troubling sign that Swen doesn't properly "get" what the intended playstyle of the DnD 5e ruleset is. DnD rules are based on the idea of attrition, having to choose how to spend limited resources in the best way to make your way through a series of encounters and still have enough left to still defeat a tougher encounter at the climax of a section.

Players naturally gravitate to the easiest possible path. Allowing players cheap and easy exploits is going to value those exploits more highly. Players will feel obligated to use them regardless of whether players "like" them or not. Cheap and easy exploits being available means that the mechanics and rules still based on 5e will feel less useful and therefore they will be used less.

There's nothing wrong with making a game with built-in exploitable mechanics. But mixing mechanics from systems with two different design goals is good for neither set of rules. If Larian really wants to keep their fun exploits, then keeping a large portion of the rules based on the 5e system which is based around attrition is counter-productive. Throw out the rules and design which are based around 5e which get in the way of the exploits, or curb the exploits so that using the 5e rules is not a clearly suboptimal strategy for gameplay.

This. What Larian need to get is that they can't do both 5e and "break the game", which they are now trying in current EA.

They also can't choose to go with the OP fun-cheese approach alone because BG3 IS a D&D 5e game and large part of the player base expects that instead of DOS3. And because the D&D gameplay is completely broken by the fun cheese rest whenever sprinkled on top.

If they really insist on keeping the OP cheese tactics and letting players "break the game", which can be fun at first but grows old VERY fast, they have to split the game into two completely different game modes.

And do people really like to play like that? Or is it their "data" showing that people throw and shove a lot, hence they must like those mechanics. I throw, shove and stealth cheese a lot because it's the most effective way and I absolutely HATE every second of it. It pains me to see the potential of BG3 wasted by ridiculous bad gameplay.

I think Swen gets it pretty well. Games should be fun. That means different things to different people. And various difficulty settings tune the experience for different people. But any particular game isn't going to make everyone happy. And D&D is more than just the combat ruleset. Not everyone who plays D&D wants a strick book implementation of combat rules.

I guess *some* players will just take the easiest path but not everyone plays that way. Also, it doesn't bother me if someone rolls a high strength char and tosses everyone around. It's not how I'll play but it won't bother me one bit if that's how someone else plays just like I don't play Ironman, or whatever you want to call it, but I don't mind if others do. I certainly don't feel obligated to use cheese just because it's in the game.

I'm more concerned about objects that say "Unknown" instead of whatever they are; missing inventory icons; the silly pathing that makes the party buzz around the lead char as I check containers or sneak around; containers "facing" the wrong way so the char has to climb over boxes to get behind the container to open it or bookcases where the player walks around to the other side of the bookcase to check the books; bad character placement during the fully voice dialog scenes; not being able to remove dead companions from the party (no I don't want to waste a resurrection scroll nor pay to revive them then dismiss them); too little info on the spell pop-ups and during character leveling; interface elements (such as the "Summon Familiar" panel) lingering when the spell is canceled instead of cast; and so on.

I'm really looking forward to this next update to see what they've fixed.

D&D isn't all about combats but combats are more important in video games than in TT.

Players don't always use the best things but players wants to be rewarded for their choices. Not using the cheese is a punishment because the game is harder.

Ofc combats are not balanced arround every cheese.
- You don't have to throw chests on your ennemies to win, you can.
- You don't have to use any barrels, you can.
- You don't have to steal tons of items or consummables, you can.

But at this difficulty you have to disengage/jump, you have to highground, you have to backstab.
Not playing with these mecanics is a chosen punishment.

It will also be a punishment not to use shove and dip when our ennemies will be more powerfull (higher difficulty).

A game should definitely reward players when they use some mechanics... It can reward them another way if they use broken mechanics... but it shouldn't punish them if they don't.

Broken mechanics are okay in games but only if they don't define/balance/break the entire system.

A game that is easily doable in solo and that can be very challenging at the same time with a party of 4 is definitely broken.

The issue is they genuinely break other mechanics and create a optimal choice when one of the things of 5e is that most things are balanced so an optimized and not optimized choice are not too far off from each other unless someone really min maxes one thing, while bg3 the optimal choices absolutely outpace every other choice to where you are purposefully gimping yourself by not using them.

To summarize: for anyone looking for good tactical combat and a challenge BG3's gameplay is mind-numbingly dumb.

Which is inexcusable because the 5e ruleset is much better than that.

If Larian wants to offer a funny cheese fest for a more casual experience where character builds don't matter they should make that a separate difficulty setting.

They should have just made DOS 3 and nobody would be disappointed.

As it currently stands, Larian essentially wasted money on buying the DnD license. Dead weight, liability; they could have kept making their cheesy stuff without it.

When I've seen "BG3" I assumed it will have DnD feeling with a reasonable amount of sensible homebrews, comparable to BG2. I've never heard about Larian at that point, and I didn't bother to research their background. Yeah, that was silly of me.

In that case why bother attaching it specifically to 5th Edition. The edition specifically denotes the change in ruleset, whereas the Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, all the campaign setting stuff is basically system version agnostic. The whole point of designating itself a 5E game is to use the 5E ruleset. To the point of the ruleset being boring, I often find anyone suggesting that, when probed further, typically reveal they don't actually know the ruleset well enough to even credibly have that opinion. Lastly, Solasta is doing very well, and while limited by the more restrictive SRD only license, its super faithful implementation of the ruleset is actually very popular and its primary advertised selling point. So dogging the system the game is based on to cover for your own, or the developers understanding/inability to implement it seems pretty sad. I echo the sentiment of the poster above who asked, "Then why even bother with the license in the first place?"

Simply because it's the newest? More in style? So it'd be better for marketing purposes? Also maybe because it's the least complicated system so it'd be easier to work with/adapt, give them more room for mixing in their own rules?

I think the question was more about DnD rather than the 5th edition.
I guess he could have wrote something like : why didn't they create DoS3 or another IP rather than an game "based" on DnD ? And the answer is probably something like "marketing purposes".

At the moment BG3 is not 100% satisfying both for DoS fans and for DnD fans. Ofc with a lot of nuance but it's pretty obvious that BG3 is an hybrid.
DnD looks like a constraint for Larian and reworking everything create many issues.

Few months ago I would say yes, now however I'm saying wait for the 8th cause it's still an EA.
They mentioned they are afraid people will call it a reskinned DOS based on the initial EA release but it will be nowhere close to it when they are done. Sven's worlds. Let's see

Feel free to corect me ...
But in most tabletop game i know (yes that mean im not quite familiar with 5e for DnD) every another ruleset change among many other things, even settings of the world ...

You cant quite create game, where people are talking about Zariel ruling hell, yet use 2e rules ... that dont make much sence. :-/

Sounds like Larian should have licensed Rifts and not D&D.