Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

I've been saying this for months since I started playing the beta: it's over-tuned as hell.
There are a lot of encounters that (unless played in some "easy mode" where you conveniently tune down things that are giving you trouble) seem to be designed under the assumption that going in with an entire collection of buffs is the only possible way to have a chance, still with the possibility of being fucked over by RNGesus.

People who threw a fit for the "HP bloat" in BG3 would attempt ritual suicide playing WoTR.

I'm liking the game, overall, but holy fucking shit if when it comes to encounter design Owlcat doesn't seem like that sweaty DM who tries too hard to be the enemy of his players at the table rather than having as a main goal to give them a good time playing.

P.S. For the record I played that entire siege in turn-based mode and with "Core rules" setting and I didn't have much of a problem. It's nowhere near to be the most infuriating encounter in the game that I played so far.

Also, just crossed one hour ago an annoying bug that made the Wights in the Pitaxian Wine Cellar completely immortal and unkillable. A dev said it's a known issue, but I wonder how long it will take to fix it.

Encounter design owns and is exactly what I wanted from a tactical RTwP game. WoTR is like if someone wanted to make a successor to BG2 but they had only ever played with SCS installed.

reking shit on Hard, Alice style:

I'm completely fine with ridiculous encounters IF they give you alternative options for lower/changing the difficulty. They have, so I only have myself to blame for refusing to change them, which i'll admit, I myself am guilty of. That defender's heart fight at level 3..oof.

Yeah, level 3, thats ouch Boblawblah. You can get to level 5 befor it if you squeeze - which is a big power jump, but even level 4 would help. Woljif sells a Wand of Grease which will easy-mode the whole encounter on Core and below so that's always an option.

Uh. Maybe, but I'm not playing RTWP because I'm not into coprophagy.
Also, the tavern siege was a piece of cake.

I have the opposite impression so far. The focus of SCS is on improving enemy scripts (especially spellcasters). In PWotR both the enemy and ally ai seems nonexistent at times.

That was only one part of SCS, a lot of it is about boosting enemies as well. Things like raising levels to 5 in BG1 to make a lot more enemies sleep immune, quadrupling health of dragons in BG2, giving enemies lots of potion buffs which they will use, precasting, reworking spell lists, etc etc. Combat ai was an important part for sure, but it was only one part. But on that I actually agree with you, enemy behavior in WoTR is pretty stupid. Here's hoping that it will be super popular and someone will make an AI mod.

When i hear SCS, my eyes roll back and i have flashbacks of the bandit camp. Gave some nice RP reasons to recruit folk like Edwyn and do sidequests, but jesus if it wasn't overtuned.

But talking of WotR, do tanks work the same as in KM? Meaning, they don't really work if they work too well? It was so odd, in KM, how tanks had to hit/get hit fairly often to keep aggro. I remember Valerie really only tanking bosses, when she got good, while Amiri always ended up tanking the mobs because the former just would always lose aggro on them.

The ai improvements is what made SCS so popular, because even without increasing the numbers (and you can set up SCS that way) it can still be a fun challenge. There is nothing innovative about using numbers bloat alone. Feels like playing LoB mode in BG EE, not SCS.

I love LoB mode in BGEE ^_^

Enemy behavior for some reason feels like it got downgraded from beta to full release. I distinctly remember enemies actually making an effort to go for my back line, ranged enemies occasionally going for my back line, or threaten my ranged characters standing too close to my front line. I never observed certain enemies casting Channel Negative Energy with no valid targets nearby during the beta either. Could be a side effect of myself picking Normal difficulty for now.

Also that orange snake pet is super distracting. Should be shrunken down to the size of a cat or something.

I noticed this too - but between Beta 2 and 3. In 2 those flies and centipedes in the prologue would go straight for the back line, which seemed to be removed in beta 3, and full release.

The Brimorak fight was especially weird to me this time around. The breath weapon it opened up with only hit his allies... I think in the effort to change AI behavior based on difficulty settings, it may have broken them in turn-based.

Good thing I'm not really here for the combat, I guess. The party banter gives me life. Speaking of party banter...

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Another exhibit in meaningful party banter, this time Seelah conversing with a quest NPC. I don't remember this being in the beta. Or at least it wasn't in beta 2.

I'm playing on Core with the "additional enemy behavior" toggle on - it's still the same. It feels like enemies are either set to "auto-attack nearest" or follows a rigid script, which is very noticeable due to the encounter design pitting you against the same type of enemies again and again.

This is probably my biggest complaint of the game from a mechanical standpoint.

I've had melee enemies occassionally go for the backline, so it isn't always attack the closest. Except it isn't working very well, because they ignore whatever is in their way, including attacks of opportunity or aoe spell effects.

I must just say: I do like this detailed hit calculation. I hope it will help me figure out what is actually happening this time around.

It is really good. Allows you to see so much detail. Now if only it had the same for damage calculations breaking down that +X into where it is coming from.

Still lots of bad bugs, like the gamebreaking morale one in act 3. The game still feels like a beta and will probably need a ~year before it's in a good state (just like Kingmaker).

WoTR is the prime example of how having too many options can be bad for casual gamers, there are too many many classes and subclasses, too many spells, the party is too large. Pathfinder is good for hardcore nerds, but for me it is too confusing and boring.

Yeah, because if it´s too complicated for you, it´s for "nerds".... really?