Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Anti-Control Spells?

The possibilities to remove control spells or negative effects from others in DnD 5e seem a bit underdeveloped to me. Or is that wrong?

I read that Larian already made several control spells/effects weaker than in normal 5e DnD, for which I'm generally grateful if it is the case. In some cases you can remove control from party members with the Help action (ok), sometimes with simple healing (maybe too easy?). But I miss some powerful dedicated ranged spells (for example of the Cleric) to get rid of control/severe conditions. The Cleric spell to remove bad conditions in melee distance is a waste of a slot in my opinion. Are there some good anti-control spells, perhaps higher than lvl 3?

For example Nere is able to take control over a character. In the last fight he forced Wyll to throw a fireball at us in the second turn after he got control of him, an unpleasant experience, luckily not decisive. Is there a way to remove the foreign control from a char? There are surely foes in the later game who are a bit more capable than Nere, is there anything one can do against control except having high stats for saving throws?

As many control spells are concentration based, I’ve tended to find the best way of breaking them is by interrupting the concentration of whoever is casting them, though obviously this only works if you have at least one party member not affected.

As we know from our own experiences in BG3 there are all too many ways of breaking concentration in the game!

If it's something that you really don't want to be hit with you can use counterspell. Clerics, bards and paladins can also cleanse some effects. But to be honest I usually simply break concentration.

Counterspell to block the spells when they are cast,
Dispel Magic to remove the spells when they are affecting a target, or to remove an individual spell effect that exists in the environment,
Freedom of Movement to remove pretty much all control effects on a single target and immunise them against those effects for a long duration.

On top of these, any effort to break the concentration of the caster will also generally end the effect, and many spells have easy ways for the affected creature, or an ally, to remove them manually (sleep lets an ally wake the target with an action, and Entangle lets and ally use their action to free you, just as two quick low level examples).

As well as this, virtually every control or status spell offers an initial save, AND a save-by-turn, so that each round the victim can attempt to save out of the effect (usually at the end of their turn, no action required).

Control spells are easy enough to end and the means of doing so are more than well developed already - they do not need to be made even weaker.

Frankly, at this point, I'm not sure how Larian could make them worse. These spells already bear the brunt of 5e nerfs to magic: re-saves every turn, concentration, removal by damage or expending actions, and a general inability to buff spell DCs - except by legendary items outside of normal leveling. On top of this, Larian has reduced durations, buffed enemy HP and sometimes saving throws, creating an environment that makes concentration much more difficult, allowed the removal of conditions via mundane actions like shove and jump, and in some cases made their areas easily destructible.

One would think they might understand that these are actually class features they're toying with, but alas. Given their fundamental design has indirectly nerfed most of them, their direct nerfs seem almost hilariously vicious.

In my experience breaking concentration usually does not work the moment you need it the most, we couldn't break f.e. Nere's over two turns (despite 5 hits). "Dispel Magic" seems to be the possibility I'm looking for.

For the rest, I'm hoping for mods which change the combat more to 5e.

Yeah, I was talking about actual 5e, as the system... Larian's game doesn't have some of those options yet, but it also has done terrible, terrible things to control effects and concentration in general, as others have described.

The cheapest way, beyond just attacking, to remove concentration is expose the concentrating target to a damaging surface. There is no save versus surface damage, and a single point of damage forces a DC 10 constitution saving throw to maintain concentration. Other than that, you can target their Dex with ice or grease surface, target Str with a Trip Attack maneuver, or target Wis with the Command spell (Grovel). All of which will render the target prone, immediately breaking the target's concentration.

Beyond that, it's best to attack with abilities or spells that the game considers multiple sources of damage. There will be a constitution saving throw for each source the game considers separate, though it's not always logical how the game decides this, you'll have to play around with them. Magic Missile would be a good example.