Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback This game is far too easy to cheese

I haven't spent that long with the game, but I already found an incredibly easy way to trivialize combat.

Example:
Stealth your entire party outside NPC view, then send one party member into combat.
From this point on, all NPC's are frozen in time as long as you don't enter their view with the remaining (out-of-combat) party members. You can then in-turn have each remaining party member enter combat exactly how they please. ignoring patrol paths and getting into perfect position before unleashing a strong attack and finally entering combat. When they are all eventually in combat (after dealing a severe blow to the enemy forces) and ended each of their turns. The enemies then have a "Surprised" non-reaction, before it's your go all over again. Needless to say, this is a devastating advantage.

I surely can't be the first person to bring this up. Is this working as intended?

My idea for a solution:
When a party member enters combat, force everyone within effective range into Time-Based mode, and into the combat initiative queue at the top of the screen.
Even if out of combat, everyone within effective range of combat should adhere to the laws of time dilation and queue order.

Most likely.
This is present since day one ...

Personaly i dont think this necesarily "need" any solution ... after all, its not something that could occur "non-intentionaly".

I am not actually against your proposition. It will definitely make the game better in terms of immersion and rule simplicity. It is overcomplicated as it is, imo. It could be simple and keep its quality.
+1

I agree. Also..."It's a legitimate strategy!" that allows a more strategical approach to combat which I love!

In my opinion, it's also more logical this way. Ennemies are only made aware of someone's presence when stepping out of the shadows to strike...or on failed Stealth checks obviously :p

Edit : I misunderstood the original post I think. See further down this thread.

I wouldnt go so far to call it legitimate ... its an exploit, no doubt about it in my mind ... but its harmless exploit, unless you want to use it.

Same as possibility to send into camp every single item you cannot carry anymore, but want to sell later.

I disagree. We discussed this topic before. I was able to have one character lock the bulette in combat and then just had one character with good stealth sitting there pummeling the creature until it died. The creature didn't even get a single attack. It just froze there while my stealth character wiped to the floor with it. That's just broken.

It's one thing if you get a single attack against a frozen Target and then you are pulled into combat. Each round you might still continue to maintain stealth, but you should be a part of the rounds from the moment you make the first attack. You should not be able to just sit there in some non-turn-based setting pummeling an enemy that is locked in turn base.

Oooh. Yeah ok. That aspect I agree!
Yes, character should enter combat mode after attack even if re-entering stealth!

What I understood from OP's post is they wanted to pull every members of the team in combat mode after one character attacks. Maybe I misunderstood?

Yes we did ...
And everyone agreed eventualy that the fact your character didnt entered combat was a bug. :-/

Yes, and the particular solution was requested before. If you continue playing you will find more issues of that kind, though stealth in particularly feels like a half-finished mechanic.

I HOPE it will be addressed, but no official word on it. Some of the issues are inherited from Larian's previous games: D:OS1&2, so the fact that they haven't been addressed so far is worrying.

Whenever you find something like that, that you think could be improved upon, then mention it. Perhaps with enough interest Larian will be more willi to spend time tightening their design.

In fairness, what you're describing is a glitch, a bug. It's worse in certain areas than others. For instance, the kua-toa. If you have one person start combat with them far enough away from the other characters then the other characters can snipe away as much as they want. It's not supposed to work that way though. It's just a bug in the system.

In general, when you attack, you're pulled into combat. What's more, you're pulled in and have to wait until the start of the next round to act again.

A lot of times the attempt at stealth can work against you, causing you to miss a turn. This happens when an enemy goes and happens to spot you, pulling you into the initiative order. You'll notice that you get pulled in with an hourglass over your character, signifying that you have to wait for the next round to act.

*

It took me a while to figure out the stealth system, but now that I understand it better I find it interesting. It's important to pay attention to the cursor when you're hiding. Stealth is about more than just the vision cones. There are areas that are well lit, partially obscured and heavily obscured. Those conditions have a big impact on whether or not you're noticed when you're hiding, even when you happen to be inside a vision cone.

I was unable to reproduce during the attack on the grove. Something (other than enemy view) was pulling my stealthed characters into combat as they approached the area. Maybe only big story events are protected by combat area trigger volumes? At least the mechanic is there to stop it. Hopefully it's used more often than not.

I discovered the exploit while fighting the Crypt skeletons, and that was my only test case before writing the op. If not for the responses here that confirm the issue, I would hope It was because I (kinda) spoiled the Crypt encounter by pressing the button while stealthed. Otherwise, everyone would have entered combat immediately. which I'm sure is what Larian intended.

As a funny side note. After the Grove battle, I somehow ended up with 2 Gale's.

This game, as well as Div1 & 2 give you alot of freedom on how you approach an encounter, including many ways to cheese. It's up to you to decide if you want to employ them. The cheese you're describing in the OP is how I passed some unfair encounters when I did a div 2 playthrough on the hardest difficult, playing the encounter as intended would usually wipe out my party in the very first turn before I even had my turn. Personally in BG3 I haven't felt the need to do so far.

As for restricting it; I wouldn't personally mind if the entire party in a certain radius gets pulled in combat if one party member initiates it. But as I mentioned before there's many more ways cheese encounters such as pre-buffing, locking up npc's prior to combat by surrounding them with crates or just litter the floor with explosives on their spawnpoint. Should we advocate for restrictions on all these things? I don't think so.

You say that... but it was like that in D:OS2, it is still like that in D:OS2 after countless patches and updates, and it has been like that since day one of BG3's EA... so whether they care about it enough to declare it a bug, or whether they laugh at it and say 'look, isn't it funny how you can exploit the system we made', the odds of it being addressed are dwindlingly slim as the days go by. It seems that "when you attack an enemy you are drawn into combat, unless you are outside of a particular range" is simply how the system works, and always has because they don't care to fix or change it.

You took the words right out of my mouth... or rather out of my fingers which type my words.

Go look at my "Why this game is awesome" post and know that I love this game. However, what I don't love is that I have to pretend I don't know certain gimmicks and just force myself to play by rules I myself have to establish in order to make the game make sense and such.

When I play a D&D video game, I don't want to have to remember all the nuances and rules. I want the game to remind me of the rules so I don't have to be the DM anymore. That's part of why I like D&D video games. I get to be the player for once. I am ALWAYS the DM.

So when I play BG3, as much as I love it, I find myself constantly having to go, "Wait. That's not one of the rules. Right? Ah dang! The NPCs are breaking the rules again. They're shoving people 30+ feet, throwing potions and healing groups of people who are all clustered together, using Bonus actions to cast spells that are higher than Cantrips right after casting a Level 1 spell or higher as an Action," etc. etc. etc. I also have to govern myself in order to play the game right, but I have absolutely no control over whether the NPCs play by the correct D&D rules. So I typically get sick of being disadvantaged at every turn because I play by the rules and the NPCs don't.

So, when it comes to stealth, I have to once again be my own dang DM. I COULD exploit the janky system once again and have my characters sit there and pummel an enemy endlessly from a distance while they are frozen in time locked in combat with one of my PCs, or I could have them shoot once and then move into position on purpose to get sucked into combat like everyone else. It's annoying and frustrating, and lots of times in order to "play by the rules" I have to put my characters in disadvantageous positions just so they enter combat. So either I sit there and exploit the ridiculous Stop Time stealth feature or I have to put my characters in disadvantageous positions in order to have them included in proper combat.

I get that with Multiplayer, it would be difficult to suck everyone in the party into a single combat. That made sense to me. It is true that if you are playing multiplayer and you are not in the same basic area, it would suck if you are pulled into combat when you can't even really engage in combat with the same group of enemies because you're like 1,000 feet away.

I also have actually come to terms with the Stop Time even in single player mode. What I discovered is that it is EXTREMELY difficult to maneuver all your party members into the positions you want to move them in when you have enemies moving about constantly. Because you are just 1 player trying to manipulate and maneuver 4 characters, you have to leave 3 characters not moving while you move a 4th into place. Then you have to hope the enemies don't find the 4th character while you move the 3rd into place. Then you have to hope they don't find either of those 2 while you move the other two into place, 1 character at a time. If the enemy spots 1 of your previously moved characters, that character doesn't get a surprise round like they would if you were just 1 player controlling 1 character.

So, it is nice to have Stop Time once the first character triggers Surprise Attack. Then you can carefully move the rest of the characters into place and have them get a surprise attack.

HOWEVER, what I don't like is, again, that you can just sit there and pummel them in Stop Time. As long as my characters get 1 Surprise Attack and only 1 Surprise Attack, I'm happy with the system in terms of it not necessarily pulling everyone in as soon as 1 character initiates combat.

+1
Party members who don't initiate the combat can obviously stay stealthed and maybe even participate in a surprise round.

If any party members are outside the "effective range", then they enter initiative (rolling for it=don't automatically get an instant free turn) the moment they enter that range. Additionally, this combat bubble should be large enough that you can't attack enemies while outside that range.

Yeah. In theory, I agree. However, like I said, in practice this does get frustrating. Trying to maneuver 4 characters one at a time into positions I want them to be in is VERY frustrating when the enemies are constantly on patrol, etc. Then you THINK you have someone in place so they won't be spotted only to have some enemy turn and BAM! They spotted the person you just got into position. Then suddenly you have 1 person in place but 3 others still sitting where you left them. You were about to try to get them in place, but now they've all been sucked into combat.

However, if you trigger 1 character and the enemies are frozen, you can still maneuver your others into advantageous positions more easily. This can be VERY helpful. Yes, it isn't perfect, but It definitely makes it a LOT less frustrating.

I've tried this numerous times. Seriously. It's frustrating as heck trying to maneuver 4 characters, 1 at a time, into place while a group of enemies are constantly moving. And I can't tell you how many times I thought someone like Astarion was in a spot where he wouldn't get spotted only to have an enemy somehow spot him. If the entire party got pulled into combat as soon as 1 character was spotted, I'd be stuck with only Astarion in place while the others are in some weird positions because I wasn't able to get them into place before Astarion got spotted.

This said. Yes. It's a mechanic that can be exploited. You can have 1 character trigger a group of enemies into combat and then have the rest just roam all about, steal stuff, have a party, etc. without anyone stopping them. That's dumb. There's no doubt about that. However, I have considered that the opposite is true. It could get very frustrating trying to position your team if they are all sucked into combat as soon as 1 gets spotted.

But this is 5E D&D - not DOS. So yes, I do want them to fix it. The current stealth system is not very realistic, or 5E-like, and properly designed encounters sholdn't require you to 'cheese' anything. Finding exploits is somethingh that EA and user testing can identify. I am afraid though that this may well be 'it' - so much of DOS has slid into BG3, perhaps due to DOS engine limitations.

The ability to see vision cones is simply wrong - you should not have access to that kind of information (directly taken from DOS). Also, patrolling/lurking characters should turn around more often and they should be engaging all their other senses, not just vision (which for some creatures means you almost certainly *can't* sneak up on them). Many monsters have incredibnly keen senses and you'd be extremley luckly to surpise them, especially if you have an armoured fighter stomping about.

Also pre-buffing is not 'cheesing' - that is the point of buff spells/abilities. 5E limits that via concentration (although you can still guzzle potions etc and the insane amount of consumables further exacerbates issues around balance). That issue aside, you make a tactical decision as to which buffs you can have active for an encounter (only 1 cocentration buff). Older versons of D&D allowed a ludicrous amount of buffing, and it then became mandatory for every encounter. I was not sorry to see that go. The lack of attunement limits in BG3 has also meant you can load up on buffing magic items in a way that is not consistent with 5E rules - again, leading to over-powered characters and the need to try and beef up opponents (unsuccessfully in many cases).

It occurs to me that the map design may prevent Larian from increasing the radius of the combat bubble. Quite a few zones have distinct encounters seperated by a couple dozen feet. It could be that tweaking the combat bubble system would create a chain reaction, merging every encounter in an area.

Why is this a bad thing? There should be some risk in trying to get the perfectly advantageous position, and it's perfectly sensible that that risk is "you're discovered while you're still positioning your guys, and thus start in a suboptimal position." The whole reason that enemies patrol is to catch intruders trying to sneak around! Also, can't you just enter TB mode to make it easier (not necessarily guaranteed) to avoid patrols?

Of course, trying to position your characters is probably frustrating in part due to the chain mechanic. So I can understand an argument "given that we have this Chain Mechanic, we should not need to do any complex positioning because it's agonizing to fight with the UI."

Damn, if only there was a solution to the problem of areas and enemies being too close together! :P

What harm? It can quickly turn into unique experience. In my recent solo playthrough the crypt bandits followed me to the Lae'zel cage and she even had special dialogue about releasing her mid-fight.