Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback AoE spells that should not be AoE

Well, with regard to the 'tyranny of clicking' I can agree that having to click twice to Dash/Disengage etc. is really too much. But, I separate clicking for no reason and clicking for a reason. I admit, I don't think these spells need to be any worse, Larian has decided to weaken the vast majority in a whole host of ways.

That's not Larian priority. Their design require on average more steps than necessary - confirmation for self cast spells, entire hotbar management, chain system that is less efficient click wise than traditional system. As it was pointed before, there are offensive powerful multiple target spells that are implented correctly, when trading one needs to switch to barter manally as default screen lacks functionality, inventory management requires sending to stash or tagging items as wares one by one by using drop down menu, when looting there is no efficient way to split loot between party members like in other RPGs.

Streamlining, or efficient UI is simply not the thing in BG3. If Larian wants to remove clicks, they have plenty of ways to do so, before having to give spells targeting system not fitting their mechanics.

If Larian sees certain spells as too powerful, they are free to modify them - they take great liberties with the source material already. Making spells fiddly to target just doesn't have a positive impact on gameplay. Those spells haven't been nerfed, they just take more time to cast.

I think we ought to separate whether we're talking about buffs or enemy-targeting spells in this conversation AND recognise that D&D has a bad history with buff spells - which you've experienced in PF (3E's successor).

(3E TT and 2E BG2, especially ToB, suffered from buffs badly. To briefly summarise, 3E TT required a spreadsheet by around 9th level and BG2-ToB a spells cast in order list. Basically, play became work, and power level between normal and buffed characters was enormous.)

I'm all for enemy-targeting spells to have individual targeting, regardless of level. There's real tactical choice here and it's not repetitive. I never cast Bane because it's random and unreliable, although I recognise it synergises with subsequent AoE spells.

For Aid, I like this buff because it doesn't need to be timed - it lasts all day. The extra HPs balances well with the cost of slot spent, and this works when you upcast too. That it affects a 4th character + familiars/companions is basically irrelevant; I'm still not putting Gale in the frontline and something more than a strong breeze will still wipe the familiar. If beastmaster rangers benefit a bit extra? Good for them, it's a niche case.

Bless is different to Aid in that it has a offensive and defensive component, and it scales! A level 10 fighter can get good mileage from the spell too. I recognise the arguments around this spell and... I wouldn't call it a difficulty option but maybe an 'Area centre' or 'Individual target' toggle?

I don't want Larian to require buffing before battles either. And to their credit, they don't. 5E has a lot of slack built into the system. Play test characters were non-optimized and magic item bonuses were not assumed. If you play PHB only and pick efficient choices, you realize around level 12 you're well ahead of the curve and could've picked flavour over crunch.

Personally, I'm not going to choose a higher than normal difficulty. I find the party dynamics and questlines both engaging and dynamic as is and am not interested in numbers-bloat. Not reloading is challenge enough.

Yeah, agreed it's getting time to move on beyond Bless, but I'll answer.

If I cast bless on Fighter Tav, Wyll and familiar, missing out Lae'zel, I'm happy enough with 2/3. If I can only get 1/3, and I can recognise that by eye-balling it now, I'll opt for something else and reposition.

When actions/spells looks fiddly, I just move the character for better position next turn, do a half-decent action and bang space. I don't torture myself spinning the camera, twisting and contorting for 10 minutes.

(There's a fun guy called CasualVeteranGamer with play throughs on Youtube who plays similarly to me, or I he. He recognises early on if some action is too hard and adjusts accordingly.)

I don't have a problem with Larian chain or BG2 formation. I admit I haven't really followed that debate, I just press G a lot and Ctrl C. That's left hand, so I appreciate that.

Making a clear distinction between buffs and debuffs/disables might actually allow the best of both worlds. That way buff spells can change in the fashion of Aid and Mage Armor. Those that come to mind right away are Motivational Speech and Heroes' Feast (if we even get to that level). Maybe Larian should just not implement those at all for aforementioned reasons, but that is a different topic.

On the other hand spells without damage dice attached to them can then still make an immediate impact in combat with full player agency by just choosing targets.

I am pretty sure it was the use of twinned that brought my attention to this issue in the first place. So as the wizard already outperforms the sorcerer in most ways, which is a general 5e issue, the way twinned metamagic is implemented worsens this imbalance quite a bit. Despite the difference in power, I still expect a lot of people will play sorcerer, and almost every one building to be effective in combat will learn twinned metamagic, unless they read beforehand how it is implemented. An option to toggle between AoE and targeting would satisfy me personally as I would even mod the game for this to change. But I am not sure a lot of players frustrated by the AoE restriction would go into gameplay options to find this, unless they got a specific hint or tutorial advice for it.

Even if they do read twin spell before hand, they will be misled... because the description and the tool tip information claims that it works the way it's supposed to in 5e... when it doesn't. We are being given false information by the game here.

For the record - the other major problem that Larian's UI design and game engine have with AoE spells is this one:





This is a consistent issue that has been reported countless times and has never been addressed: the UI reports valid targets, but then does not check them.

In this situation, you can clearly see that the UI is reporting that 4 targets are within range of the grease spell where currently targeted; they are highlighted, and have the secondary inner circle on them to signify that they Will be affected by this spell.

When the spell was released, however - and rest assured there was no last second pixel slipping of the mouse or anything like that - the spell went off and only One target was counted as being affected by the spell, and only that one target made a saving throw. The other three did not make saves as they were counted as not being in the spell. This happens all the time, and is utterly unacceptable of any modern game - the UI feedback is literally lying to us.

Yes that's something I understood when I reworked arrows effects.

The center of the red circle define the characters position on the ground. If the AOE radius is not big enough to reach the central point of the circle down the characters, they won't be affected.

On the other hand, characters are highlighted and the circle change as soon as the radius touch it.

I hope this will be fixed at release because at this point it's just a shame.

Bless could work like magice missle i think someone made a staff that heals AoE targets in the same way.

About AoE UI yeah it's annoying when target are shown as effected but then they are not.

Targeting circles are badly made no way around it and if they highlight the spell should work simple as that OR you are better of without highlights altogether.

UI circles in general mediocre still time to impove those at least.

No clue why the whole circles under the enemies don't glow up. Same could be used when we leave reach and trigger AoO.
Bodies can cover those circles so it's not clear at all times.

Clarity is one of the most important aspect of any user interface. To be effective, people must be able to recognise it.