Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Several BS mechanics/gameplay issues

Alright, I'll try to contain my bitterness as I just dumped 5 hours redoing the same part twice, yet I'll have to do it once again because of BS inconsistencies / mechanical issues / questionable gameplay choices.


The first time I had to reload is because one of my characters died from the most BS mechanical issue / gameplay choice : he was 5 meters from a ledge, got shot by an arrow from a goblin, and got knocked back FIVE FEET BACKWARDS into the bottomless pit. Instant death. It was going to be a difficult fight with the whole party, but with one character being insta-killed, I just had to reload after over 2 hours of play. I know it's normal to die from falling into a bottomless pit, don't get me wrong, the concern I have is that an arrow shot KNOCKED ME BACK FIVE METERS. There is NO mechanic in D&D 5e that makes that happen other than the Fighter's Battlemaster's maneuver Pushing Attack (that maneuver is already questionable in itself, making an arrow push back a creature 15 feet). Even if that had been the case, because the goblin was lv3 if I recall, so it was *possible* that he had that maneuver (although I didn't see any saving throw roll having been made), another goblin who was only lv1 knocked back another character several meters with an arrow.

The second time I had to reload, A LOT of questionable (BS) things happened.

1. In the goblin camp, you can enter the fortress by breaking the unstable wall, which awakens the sleeping drunk goblins. The first time I went through that part, I fought off those goblins in a few turns, and that was it. The second time however, after the first round, ALL the goblins joined the turn other. What the heck?

2. So I was in for a tough fight, but I had the high ground, so it was doable. But NOPE, the game had tricks up its sleeves. The bugbear on the high ground dashed and pushed back the cleric more than 5 meters (AGAIN - even if he had already used his action to dash!!!) over the ledge and down a few stories, almost killing her off instantly.

3. I managed to have her dash away up a platform where she would have some cover and crowd control, but NOPE, a bugbear that was too far to make it to the ladder and climb simply jumped up 4 times his height. Even a bullywug, who can jump 10 feet vertically, would not have been able to make that jump.

4. So I'm down one party member right off the bat for BS reasons, AGAIN. Yet this time, I don't give up, I figure that with the high ground, I can kill the goblins as they try to climb up. But NOPE, they simply run right against a wall at the bottom floor, and voilà! they get teleported to my level instantly, coming out of the rock wall. WHAT THE HECK?!

5. Finally, as a bug made it that combat was frozen after an enemy's turn, I clicked on one of my character's icon to try and unbug combat, and the turn order skipped two of my party members to get to the turn of the character I clicked on.



In short, I am disgusted by how illogically unfair the game is towards the player. The enemy creatures can literally break whatever laws of physics and combat mechanics in D&D 5e to destroy you unexpectedly.


Couple that with enemies able to throw potions at each other to heal themselves, the super dumb AI of your party members as they run straight into the traps you discovered or as they climb up and down indefinitely a ladder because they bump into each other as they get off it, the actions you waste because you click a tiny bit off your target, which resets the action you selected (like a spell) but activates the default action, which is attack (go wizard, smack him with your quarterstaff!) or move, oh and speaking of movement you can't even reposition yourself around an enemy, ANY movement in this game in an enemy's range triggers an opportunity attack!


Yup, I'm seriously considering asking for a refund, and forget this game (which is incredible for the NPCs' acting by the way) even exists.

Unfortunately this is part of EA and bugs do occur. It's highly advised to save very regularly and also make separate saves without only relying on quick or autosaves.

Im affraid this was not a bug ...
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Arrow+of+Roaring+Thunder

Again, possibly not a bug ...
Question here is where was rest of your party, if you are too close to edge and in combat, you need to remember that you stand straight in line of sight of all those goblins down there.

Once again, not a bug ...
Push costs, as far as i know, bonus action.
(Note that i dont comment what it "should cost according to 5e" ... but just what it costs right now, right in this game.)

Here im affraid we dont have enough information to say anything about it ... but concidering rest of the post, i presume you simply guessed the height wrong. :-/
Screenshot would be helpfull in the future.

Again, not a bug ...
This is called "goblin hole", and it was mentioned in Patch 5 notes ... specificly:
* Added holes for goblins to navigate the several levels of the Goblin Camp more easily.

You can probably imagine it as corridors dug by goblins as a shortcut.

This actualy sounds like bug.

I didn't understood the thing with whole.
What a lazy solution. If the map design does not work... Design it another way...

Just create stairs if necessary... It would be fun to ambush them while they're on a stair.
Looking at them crossing magical holes looks to suck. I'll try this.

The issue with shove and jump has been brought A LOT. Not sure it's gonna be fix but yeah, it's ridiculous and boring.

I really like this sentence. It's really true about many things in the game .. not only combats and ennemies...

Thank you Ragnarok for your reply. Can't say I'm totally fine with your explanations, but at least I'm less bitter about it - sleeping it over helped too.

Funny how I see ppl complain about things calling it unfair instead of thinking before acting in a fight. Have you thought about you know, killing the sleeping ones first? It's kinda sad someone blames unfairness towards the player just because you're inexperienced or didn't think before acting.

Remaining close to any edge is not the best move, players or enemies, you will be shoved at some point, and if you may not know, dash consumes action, shove bonus action, so it's quite normal, and I like that they can think on using it. It's your fault for not being careful.

As for enemies joining, there are patrols, if one gets close that will alert the others. I never once died or even lost a party member at the Goblin camp. Just explored it first, found some small holes, covered them, killed all sleeping ones, done. Just shoot them from high ground. Only a few may manage to get close now, but easy kill.

games like this and DOS2 will punish you if you think is just go straight to battle like most RPGs and that's it. Thinking, planning before acting is what will make this game easier and funnier to play. Every time I find new ways to approach battles, and that's what makes me replay it so much.

I understand that you may feel frustrated sometimes, but after you start seeing things like it, and spend some time planning, positioning your party members before the beginning of any battle, you'll see how amazing the combat can be.

Can you enlighten us and explain us how you prevent being shove considering that you push / are pushed 5m away, usually a distance that is larger than most "highgrounded" area ?

How are you doing on the last boat to prevent being shove ?

I like that they can shove.I hate that it's cost free and that they can dash+shove. Shove as a bonus action is ridiculously OP. It has always been.

Well, I can't tell about others but I mean... I know that a border is right there. So I position myself on the opposite side of the edge, they mostly won't even try the shove. And a simple solution. Don't go full group combat, Separate companions, position them first. Then start the combat, use the hiding outside of combat companions to kill the ones that can be more dangerous to use it on you. I know it seems complicated, but is easier than it sounds once you start doing it more often.

Meh, this is basically leveraging a well known exploit.

There's directionality to shoves. The AI will in my experience not usually take long detours to find just the right direction to shove you off a ledge, so just make sure they approach from an angle where a shove is not going to be fatal.

If that's not possible then it helps to make the terrain they navigate hard to move through. The AI really hates moving through surfaces effects, so grease or web or what have you can slow down approaches. Flaming sphere cannot be pushed or manipulated in any way by the AI, so that can also do something. And of course it's reasonably hard to push a character with proficiency in athletics and 20+ strength from a potion. There's also hiding and potion of invisibility. Mage hand is mostly useless, but it's still a "creature", it takes up space, and it costs an action to kill it.

Yes, pushing with a bonus action is powerful, but there's always going to be something or other that is "OP", and frankly I like having options to keep squishy ranged characters apart from mobs of less squishy hostile melee grunts.

Wyll is a warlock and needs room to eldricht blast. Shadowheart deals okay damage with a crossbow but doesn't do a whole lot with dagger and shield, which is pretty much how she has to be kitted to work. Gale is a mage and not that great in melee. And if we can't keep them in the clear for more than one round before grunts have dash, action surge dash right into their face then how are any of them really all that useful? And that's what shove as a bonus action does, IMO.

But yes, it is very strong and what really takes it over the top is just how far people will fly. Reduce it to a default of 2-3 meters horizontal distance regardless of fall distance and suddenly it's a whole different thing.

...right. I should've anticipated that this game allowed for further shoving than what I am used to in D&D 5e. 5 feet and 5 meters are almost the same, anyway. (Big sarcasm here.)

You say Iwasn't careful, but I have been. I have explored the whole goblin camp before making a move. The "goblin holes that allow them to climb 50 meters instantly" are invisible. So if you could block them, you had to know they were there. Big d*ck move to pin it on my inaptitude when you know about it beforehand.

But let's assume that ALL that I said previously was normal and preventable. Just now, a goblin tossed a vial of acid from a distance of 30 meters straight on my party. That 100 feet. In D&D, 5e, you can't throw ANYTHING with your hand past 60 feet. You're going to tell me Ishould've been careful? That it is normal that the game doesn't allow me, the play, to shoot a Fire Bolt or Magic Missile past 18 meters (60 feet) when the range in D&D 5e is 120 feet, but the enemy can throw potions at their allies or vials of acid/fire at the enemy twice that range?

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my original post that yesterday, I put a Fog Cloud in-between my party and some distant goblins a little below me to prevent them from shooting at me... and guess what? They could shoot me through it just as if it wasn't there! They must have had Truesight 120 feet, because normally, you CANNOT SEE through heavily obscured areas, and therefore you CANNOT TARGET creatures with ranged attacks.


EDIT : Right after I posted this reply, I went back to the game to redo the whole goblin camp. As I attacked the sleeping bugbear at the upper level, everybody IMMEDIATELY woke up, ready for combat (no turn of waking up, figuring what's going on? How did they even wake up anyway?), and the bugbear goes first, shoves my fighter TEN METERS AWAY from him (still no Strength contest) down to the base floor and then goes to attack another party member. That's 30 feet. There isn't a single creature or mechanism in D&D 5e that allows shoving back 30 feet, let alone without any saving throw.

2nd EDIT : I reloaded the game just before attacking the bugbear in its sleep, this time putting ALL my party as close to the wall as I could. He still shoved my character 10 meters away down the ledge.

This looks very theoric... But the entire map is build arround verticality. You always have to go higher not to have disadvantage and a lot of area does not have a side you can't be pushed from (blighted village roofs + next to the mill, gate of the goblins camp, outside the goblins camp, gnolls boss, giths, ...)
On top of that everyone does not play ranged characters so you just have to go where your ennemies are... you know, usually higher on edges...

About your repetitive strategy no, thank you.
I'm usually playing with fighter and melee classes. I don't want to ambush every ennemies. Combats are ridiculously easy if you ambush them all the time and it's so boring to deal with the chain and the turn based mode to position your companions.


Oh yeah, all this to avoid a too powerfull bonus action. Unrealistic suggestions to prevent being shove.


I'd say 1-2 meters rather than 2-3 but anyway... agree with reducing the distance.
But it would be better if it was an action too.

The whole thing with surface prep and whatnot isn't merely to protect against shoves, but it also does that. But mainly it is a question of protecting space. In my observation, the main tactical concept one has to look for above all else is high ground, and finding a good high ground position is such a huge advantage that it should not be surrendered easily. That means keeping enemy swarmers from infiltrating your position and forcing primarily ranged characters into melee or forcing them to waste their action on disengaging and retreating.

As for specific encounters, I cannot comment on all of them, but the blighted village rooftops strike me as a very easy place to avoid getting pushed, assuming you take the side entrace to the left of the main entrance. Then climb onto the roof of that building, exploit that the gobbo archer and priest on that roof are looking the wrong way and sneak up on them, then shove the priest down and fight the archer in melee. Or shove that archer too. Any hostiles will now only come from one direction and their shoves, if any, will send backwards on the roof rather than down to the ground.

The mill fight is difficult, absolutely. Too many enemies to keep things under control. But if I decide to take that fight (and being a bit of a murder hobo when it comes to gobbos, I generally want to), I would park most of my party far away on distant rooftops, and then use a character with jump or good stealth or very good AC or cunning action dash to initiate the fight. And then I would run away, find a nice dark spot, and hide. Then reposition and hide. And then I would pull the whole mob closer with a mage hand on the ground, then start killing whatever is convenient. Yes, I absolutely would exploit shoot and hide "cheese" here (and maybe move that nice barrel at the entrance to the village), in order to even the odds. Fighting straight up, there's just too much coming your way.

The gobbo camp exterior has a number of places where I reckon that the fight is doable from. Right next to the weakened wall is one spot. But notice that right next to the sleeping bugbears, there's an elevated grassy area. That's another nice place where you have great control over the direction of enemies and can make it very hard for them to reach easy-to-shove characters. And if you follow that grassy area, you will reach a climbdown to an elevated grassy section that connects to the wall, with a ladder down to approximately where Crusher is standing. This grassy bit is another awesome place to fight the whole camp from. Even better if you prep a bit by switching off all torches below and drop a grease bottle. Maybe drop one on the wall section also.

The gnoll boss can be an absolute PITA, but it can be approached from a direction where shoves don't send you flying downwards. You can circle around the encounter rather than approach from below, if that makes sense, and there are some small elevated sections where I can't imagine that it is likely to get a good angle to shove you anywhere. That said, I have not actually done this fight too many times yet, so there is probably some exploitable environment factors that I'm overlooking.

The giths, well, it feels to me as if the AI is really just looking for enough room to misty step, and if you're a couple of meters from the edge then it misty steps behind you and shoves. GG. But if you leave 2-3 meters of room then, in my limited observation, then AI will happily teleport up right next to the edge and then take it from there. And then it's your turn and you can shove or thunderwave or thunder arrow or push attack. This is one fight where I would happily cede ground to ensure the direction that the giths can approach from.

You have to approach this as its own game with its own crazy homebrew (think of it as a very drunk DM who opened the 5E player's handbook for the first time the night before) rather than a strictly 5E adventure by a digital version of your regular DM. Sure, you largely know what's going on, but take nothing for granted. That said, there really is no introduction to just how much you can move enemies and objects with shoves (and how much they can move you), and there certainly should be come full release. But once you know about it, you can start planning for it.

If a gobbo can throw something at you from 30 meters then that sounds like a bug. I have not seen that happen. Mind you, distance for ranged attacks and throws is a bit weird, and you can at times attack beyond normal range, but 30 meters almost certainly should not be possible.

Fog Cloud, yes, that spell is buggy at the moment. Rather than actually being a visual blockade, what it does is impair blindness on anything inside it and I *think* that it also makes anything inside unable to be attacked from the outside. This does make the spell rather less useful, however it is not considered an attack and characters inside the fog will move away. Visual range inside the fog is zero. This means a particularly exploitative kind of player could use fogs to make it trivial to pickpocket potions and special arrows away from all the gobbos before starting the fight.

Regarding shoves, there actually does appear to be a resistance check, presumably with the DC being the shover's athletics versus the shovee's athletics or acrobatics, whichever is higher. Bugbears are pretty strong so they're not bad at shoving. That said, it really does sound to me as if you're not positioning a whole lot before that fight and you're giving the grunt a good angle. Also possibly without really doing much to avoid being in LoS from below. I have not really checked out the gobbo hole mechanics much, but do notice the raised plateau right next to those bugbears. That's probably where you want your party members, if hugging the weakened wall isn't doing it. I would very strongly recommend ungrouping your party (there is a button for this now, but it is unassigned by default) and finding good positions for them individually.

A 10 meter shove does sound rather ridiculous, though. Would your fighter be a dex-based hafling or gnome or such? And I'm assuming without proficiency in acrobatics? Otherwise it sounds like a bug more than anything. I have not seen normal sized characters get pushed that far by other normal sized characters, but I am fairly sure that shove distance is affected by shover strength and size versus target's weight and maybe size. Which makes sense, you have to admit, even though 10 meter shoves from unexceptional enemies is of curse quite ridiculous.

Edit: I just noticed your other topic on that shove, and it seems like you fell down a pit? That does change things. Obviously that's not how a drop works in real life, but the game seems to maintain your horizontal movement speed during descent, so the further you fall down, the further you move horizontally. And moving 10 meters that way is very possible, even though it is obviously nonsense.

Fog cloud might be bugged, I'd suggest making a bug report. I use the Larian feedback page and so far I got a response on all my reports.

About the shove resistance check, I looked carefully everytime, and there wasn't a Save dice icon appearing.

My fighter is a 16 STR human with proficiency in Athletics.

I attempted that encounter 5 times, and even when I was hugging the wall behind the sleeping bugbears, they could find a way to shove me down the ledge.

I calculated the distance from my character to the ledge, not including the falling distance.

There's no clear indication but not all shoves succeed and in my experience, which obviously isn't matching yours, characters with more athletics resist shoves more often than characters with less. Also, some characters have way more luck pushing enemies than others. And the shove distances seem to be affected by strength. My strength 8 warlock could barely make anything move a few meters, but Laezel can put her back into it.

As for your high strength human going flying like that, it sounds ridiculous. Definitely not my experience. If it is happening that reliably, quicksave just before it happens and report it along with the save file, I would say.

Fog cloud and darkness are both bugged. It just makes whatever is inside it blind as you said. They can even jump out of it without being able to see. Since you can jump as a BA, it makes the spells almost useless. You’d basically need a fighter with blindsight and sentinel to stand next to the blind target while the spell is cast to keep it in there. I was trying to set up devil’s sight. Caster enemy Wyll was the turn order. Blinded enemy, end turn, enemy jumps 40 feet while landing perfectly, and drops Wyll. So the enemy knew where it could safely jump, and what target was there for it all while being blind lol.

I haven't noticed any contesting Strength or Athletics saving throws/checks to resist being pushed, my high strength/athletics characters seem to get shoved around just as much as my wizards and warlocks. It seems like it's set up on a regular attack system, where the enemy goes to shove you or you go to shove them, it rolls an attack, and if it hits then you shove them with no contest at all. Could be wrong, but it certainly seems like it's just treating it like a regular "oh you rolled higher than their AC so you shove them off a cliff"