Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Patch 6 - stop adding combat actions to bonus actions

I don't really agree with this analysis. How else do you fight someone but head on, unless it is an ambush? Once the element of surprise is over and you have launched your attack from behind or the side, you can guarantee your foe, provided they are still standing, will the be facing you head on.

Not that bringing reality into a fantasy game holds much weight but I'd hazard a guess that once a fight starts (these aren't battles, given the small number of people involved in the fighting), the last thing you'd want to do is show your back to an enemy in an attempt to get away and find a 'good position'. There is too much emphasis on positioning and the environment in this game.

You must misunderstand my meaning. There was an opinion in this thread saying that foes are too dynamic right now, and they should attack your party head-on instead of teleporting or jumping to the back of your party trying to find a better position for themselves, which means the player could hide their wizard behind the warrior easily, and I just disagree with this opinion. I agree with you that this game emphasis on positioning and the environment, but I don't find it is harmful, and for other people who love this type of fight, they may find it attractive and strategically challenging. Actually this is one of the core features of this game which they put a lot effort to develop complex fight environments. So in my opinion, such a suggestion is meaningless because they will not change it at this stage of game development. The only thing they can and will do is to balance the advantage of the environment, such as the weakening of the highland advantage in patch 6.

Disagree, don't start characters at level 5, just remove the *&^#$*^# level cap

I like the new actions, but I think some of them need to be rebalanced. I don't mind that some of them are bonus actions -- there's what, two or three of them that are?

5e gave martials a raw deal by removing much of their ability to influence the battlefield in comparison to 3.5 (and relegating them to a Fighter subclass if you still wanted to be a capable warrior), making them less dynamic and less effective at what they do. 5e also made weapons more similar for the sake of simplicity, which while understandable also had the consequence of weapon types losing some personality.

These new weapon abilities aren't perfect, but they do a decent job at returning battlefield agency to martial characters and giving weapon types a bit of definition and profile -- weapon choice now matters beyond the damage die. They also improve collaboration between characters: without them there's no reason to ever have Gale that quarterstaff he's lugging around because of the neglible chance of hitting (of course I do anyway because Gandalf is at his coolest when he's punting fools in the head), but with the trip move there's at least a reason to consider trading the chance of missing for advantage to attacks against the prone enemy with your other characters. Meanwhile, the short rest limit means that using these abilities won't become the standard procedure and that you'll still be saving them for when the best opportunity shows itself rather than using them instead of basic attacks at every turn.

So yeah, some of the abilities need rebalancing. Some of them need reworking. But the general idea is good and they should keep the concept in the game.

This is only partially true.

In good tactical combat you should have ways to control the battlefield to protect the weak party members. You should be able to soft lock enemies with a melee fighter and threaten AoOs if they try to go for the Wizard. But Larian has even Minotaurs and Hook Horrors jumping wherever they please i.e. on top of Gale without drawing any AoOs.

You should also be able to move the Wizard behind foliage or other terrain for cover. But cover doesn't exist in BG3. Enemies shoot you down through full cover foliage or even through another tanky PC without any penalty or line of sight issues.

We should be able to give the enemy tough choices to go for the 1hp Wizard but right now it's a no brainer for them. If Larian can't create good tactical combat providing us with defensive options, they should balance it out with the AI being less metagaming ruthless (beelining for the lowest AC).

I prefer it as it is now than AI mindlessly attacking warriors on the front line. If the player himself can focus on the enemy mages, why can't the enemy do the same?

Agreed. Intelligent enemies should continue as they are, but maybe those that operate on instinct or who aren't intelligent should probably go for the nearest party member. Besides, if you make use of positioning and area spells then you can direct the enemy a bit better into going where you want them.

This was discussed a long time ago, but I'll again bring up my suggestion that enemy tactics could depend on some combination of Int+Wis. E.g.,
Int+Wis < 13 - always attack nearest target
13 < Int + Wis < 23 - still prefer nearby targets, but focus on those with lighter armor, maybe ganging up on a close one within reach.
Int+Wis > 23 - "smart" enemies. Will go for backline casters, gang up on the characters with combination of low hp&low ac. Might make use of high ground & debuffing items/abilities.

It would add some variety to and different tactics for different combats.

Something like this could work but I would maybe make the total a bit lower, or just consider it by the type of enemy. Beasts should be more instinctual, most humanoids should be more tactical, etc.

The problem is that even an animal will try to kill the weakest one first. Even the dumbest goblin is rather smarter than a regular wolf, so it should rather be able to recognize which target is easiest to kill and which is the most dangerous (mages happen to fit into these two categories)

I'm open to some uniqueness with each weapon type, but I agree that weapon attacks should not come freely as bonus actions. If they want the "signature move" for each weapon to be different, that's cool, but it shouldn't create a whole bunch of extra attacks, it should just create different types of attacks to choose from with your standard action.

Honestly, these abilities aren't that powerful.
The charge with the spear seems pretty good, but it's hard to use it sensibly, it requires a straight path to the target.
From what I tested, a simple stone is enough and the whole skill is useless.
The other skills are not very powerful either (I'm talking about bonus actions) and definitely not worth using if they were full of action from what I noticed, they are only on two-handed weapons, but it's still a much better idea to just wear shields.
The only too strong skill seems to be mobilization to have advantage until the end of the round, costing only the move is potentially a bit too strong.

Somebody is going to have to list all of these bonus action abilities because you keep making it sound like there's a lot of them. I've only seen two -- the Pommel Strike one and the Flourish one.

Martial classes boring? i disagree, its just that theres to much unbalanced ranged combat, every encounter i engane the melee oponents are the weak ones and i wait to take em out untill last, it seems to me that Larians weakest point is actually that they want too give to many options to the players and by doing that they wash out the difference in classes and builds the tactical choises and different builds gets watered out when everyone can do everything at any time. a few examples of things that are way to unbalanced and needs to be adressed are
Bonus actions in general
pushing/showing
familliars and pets since they are basicly free to cast or replace (especially flying ones)
throwing items as far as you can shoot an arrow
too many pots/scrolls/arrows that just makes any class a spellcaster.


if you adress theese issues melee characters can hopefullyl find their rightfull place again, im not saying to remove it but just balance it

How is this supposed to positively impact martial classes?
The only thing it will make is that they will be greatly weakened in relation to the magic classes

I'm not sure to understand everything... But about shove he's definitely right.

Shove to disengage : it's something the AI (try to) do A LOT since patch 5. If the ennemy can disengage as a bonus action, it's harder for martial classes to fill their role.
Shove to push : when you're pushed in a hole, your martial classes that is not build to attack at range has to run, and sometimes A LOT to re-engaged an ennemy. And you can bu pushed a lot with shove being a bonus action, even if you care.

Shove hasn't been that big of a problem anymore since its effectiveness has been linked to strength. For most humanoid opponents present in EA, most of them have a very low level of strength, which makes the shove quite ineffective.
From what I've noticed, it's most often used by AI to release allies from CC (which is quite an interesting use).
You can change a shove into an action, but you would have to give it back in order to actually use the bonus action.

Where did I suggest that AI should mindlessly attack front liners or that I should be able to easily focus fire enemy casters?

I was talking about how melee should matter more and how things like cover should exist in a good tactical combat game.

Do goblins have high strength? Because I did Gobbo leader fight yesterday and it was shove central. Sure it didn't [work] more often then it did, but with every goblin getting to do shove almost everyturn while still acting normally odds are in [favour of] shove more or less removing your from the fight sooner or later. 1 character got shoved down as soon as the conversation ended and two others followed later on (some goblin went down as well, as shove was new-high ground in this encounter). I ended up starting the conversation from behind the throne and hugging the wall opposite to the spider pit, because I swear it feels that no matter how far you are from the pit push trajectory will extand and outoadjust just so you end up falling down.

During that fight 3 of mine also fall in the pit with spiders...
So boring to loose 5 turns to destroy the metal door than dashing to get back in the fight...

I started in the back of the hobgoblin too but as soon as the whole map turns hostile, we had to fight all arround the pit.
But one is going to say that I should have wait far away and wait many turns for them to come (or eventually shout each turn without moving at all)