Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Baldur's gate 3 keeps winning!

 

[cretin]

Did anyone who is "smashing" BG3's combat play honor difficulty?

I am playing honor mode and got my shit pushed in by the hag early on so I continued with dishonor. So its just tactician on a single save now, except the bosses still have their legendary actions, which do increase their difficulty quite a bit I feel. There's plenty of pushover fights but there's also plenty of hard ones and often I'm surprised by which are which.

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games. Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

OTOH, I think Larian have missed a trick by focusing their efforts on the AI behaviors and abilities for difficulty modes, instead of attacking the resources made available to players. A common criticism is that you can long rest pretty much all the time with no consequence and that is still true even on higher difficulties, you just find an abundance of food throughout the world without even trying, and the game is constantly throwing potions and scrolls at you. An obvious starting point for any player made difficulty mods in the future would be to address the insane amount of resources given to players. Having to strategically balance your rests would make for a significantly different campaign and also probably incentivize gold towards buying resources instead of kind of afterthought it currently is.

 

[Lacrymas]

So you can tie up one caster so another one can double-cast? Isn’t that just running in circles?

You don't "tie up" a caster when they cast Haste, what? Concentrating on a spell doesn't mean you stop being able to cast anything at all.

 

[raeven]

Did anyone who is "smashing" BG3's combat play honor difficulty?

I am playing honor mode and got my shit pushed in by the hag early on so I continued with dishonor. So its just tactician on a single save now, except the bosses still have their legendary actions, which do increase their difficulty quite a bit I feel. There's plenty of pushover fights but there's also plenty of hard ones and often I'm surprised by which are which.

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games. Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

OTOH, I think Larian have missed a trick by focusing their efforts on the AI behaviors and abilities for difficulty modes, instead of attacking the resources made available to players. A common criticism is that you can long rest pretty much all the time with no consequence and that is still true even on higher difficulties, you just find an abundance of food throughout the world without even trying, and the game is constantly throwing potions and scrolls at you. An obvious starting point for any player made difficulty mods in the future would be to address the insane amount of resources given to players. Having to strategically balance your rests would make for a significantly different campaign and also probably incentivize gold towards buying resources instead of kind of afterthought it currently is.

I'm over 200 hours into my first playthrough and I'm not even close to done. Honor mode has only existed for what, a month? It's going to take awhile for people to finish it.

 

[cretin]

Did anyone who is "smashing" BG3's combat play honor difficulty?

I am playing honor mode and got my shit pushed in by the hag early on so I continued with dishonor. So its just tactician on a single save now, except the bosses still have their legendary actions, which do increase their difficulty quite a bit I feel. There's plenty of pushover fights but there's also plenty of hard ones and often I'm surprised by which are which.

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games. Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

OTOH, I think Larian have missed a trick by focusing their efforts on the AI behaviors and abilities for difficulty modes, instead of attacking the resources made available to players. A common criticism is that you can long rest pretty much all the time with no consequence and that is still true even on higher difficulties, you just find an abundance of food throughout the world without even trying, and the game is constantly throwing potions and scrolls at you. An obvious starting point for any player made difficulty mods in the future would be to address the insane amount of resources given to players. Having to strategically balance your rests would make for a significantly different campaign and also probably incentivize gold towards buying resources instead of kind of afterthought it currently is.

I'm over 200 hours into my first playthrough and I'm not even close to done. Honor mode has only existed for what, a month? It's going to take awhile for people to finish it.

34,000 people already failed at the time of those stats being published. That means a success rate of about 1.1%. I doubt this figure will change much in 6 months time, probably it will climb to 2-4% at the most.

No matter how you want to slice it, BG3 on the difficulty that is clearly intended for CRPG players is a challenging game. And just to clarify, I mean tactician. Honor mode just gives us a decent measuring stick of how actually difficult the game is vs the endless amount of bullshit artists on the internet who will tell you they facerolled the entire thing without reloading once.

 

[Lacrymas]

There are so many failed attempts at honor mode because BG3 is for dilettantes who thought they were good at video games due to the hilariously easy tactician mode.

 

[Rhobar121]

What are the "befudding" changes again? That jump is a bonus action instead of normal one?

There are not one, but two whole lists of changes, most of them bad. The biggest ones before getting to Haste that trivialize most of the content is every character being able to use scrolls, *all* potions are bonus actions (instead of only health potions which is the most common house rule), you aren't limited to 3 magic items per char, jump is not only a bonus action but also makes your character jump out of environmental hazards (f.e. Spike Growth) without taking damage, respec is ridiculously cheap and you can do it very early in act 1 (meaning you can respec on an encounter-per-encounter basis), there is no component-based spellcasting (so everyone can cast anything at any time), the bonus spell/cantrip rule (i.e. you can only cast a cantrip if you cast a spell as a bonus action) isn't implemented, and you can prepare spells whenever (not just during long rests). This is without going into class-specific changes or itemization.

Half of that is an improvement over 5e.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

Did anyone who is "smashing" BG3's combat play honor difficulty?

I am playing honor mode and got my shit pushed in by the hag early on so I continued with dishonor. So its just tactician on a single save now, except the bosses still have their legendary actions, which do increase their difficulty quite a bit I feel. There's plenty of pushover fights but there's also plenty of hard ones and often I'm surprised by which are which.

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games. Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

OTOH, I think Larian have missed a trick by focusing their efforts on the AI behaviors and abilities for difficulty modes, instead of attacking the resources made available to players. A common criticism is that you can long rest pretty much all the time with no consequence and that is still true even on higher difficulties, you just find an abundance of food throughout the world without even trying, and the game is constantly throwing potions and scrolls at you. An obvious starting point for any player made difficulty mods in the future would be to address the insane amount of resources given to players. Having to strategically balance your rests would make for a significantly different campaign and also probably incentivize gold towards buying resources instead of kind of afterthought it currently is.

It's difficult to play without dying a single time? So that's your definition of difficult? Not dying a single time?

 

[cretin]

Did anyone who is "smashing" BG3's combat play honor difficulty?

I am playing honor mode and got my shit pushed in by the hag early on so I continued with dishonor. So its just tactician on a single save now, except the bosses still have their legendary actions, which do increase their difficulty quite a bit I feel. There's plenty of pushover fights but there's also plenty of hard ones and often I'm surprised by which are which.

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games. Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

OTOH, I think Larian have missed a trick by focusing their efforts on the AI behaviors and abilities for difficulty modes, instead of attacking the resources made available to players. A common criticism is that you can long rest pretty much all the time with no consequence and that is still true even on higher difficulties, you just find an abundance of food throughout the world without even trying, and the game is constantly throwing potions and scrolls at you. An obvious starting point for any player made difficulty mods in the future would be to address the insane amount of resources given to players. Having to strategically balance your rests would make for a significantly different campaign and also probably incentivize gold towards buying resources instead of kind of afterthought it currently is.

It's difficult to play without dying a single time? So that's your definition of difficult? Not dying a single time?

You have bad reading comprehension.

If an rpg has battles such that it requires you to have to reload multiple times to find success, yes, that would be my definition of difficulty and I imagine many other people's. An ironman mode that records how many unsuccessful vs successful attempts there are is simply a good objective metric vs endless amounts of bullshit artists on the internet who can claim without any proof whatsoever that they faceroll a game, because you cant just quickload until RNGesus blesses your bum ass. Whats YOUR definition of difficulty?

 

[cretin]

No, you know what, the rpgs where your party never died once, where everything you tried was met with success, THOSE are the really difficult rpgs

 

[Lacrymas]

Ironman is not about your party not failing once, it's about you not failing once. People should play more roguelikes.

 

[processdaemon]

Any vegans in this game? I assume the bear isn't vegan.

I only play games with strong vegan representation.

When you're choosing rations for resting you can decide to give yourself an extra challenge by refusing to use meat and dairy, which is neat because in a way it also makes everyone at camp suffer for your moral decisions, the ultimate vegan power trip.

 

[jackofshadows]

its just tactician on a single save now

Is there no changes whatsoever to the rules? I'm lazy to look that up but I've heared some action economy issues were addressed (like haste being too op).

 

[processdaemon]

its just tactician on a single save now

Is there no changes whatsoever to the rules? I'm lazy to look that up but I've heared some action economy issues were addressed (like haste being too op).

There are a good few changes to the movesets of boss fights and they've rebalanced some of the more egregious bugs and quirks of Larian's system (haste for martials and the DRS exploits are the most significant nerfs imo but here is a full list)

 

[Fedora Master]

The FR experts here tell me BG3 is a very faithful representation of the FR setting.

I don't know who that would be, because they're clearly wrong.
Larian didn't get Tieflings and attitudes towards them right, they didn't get Duergar right, or Dragonborn.

 

[Desiderius]

So you can tie up one caster so another one can double-cast? Isn’t that just running in circles?

You don't "tie up" a caster when they cast Haste, what? Concentrating on a spell doesn't mean you stop being able to cast anything at all.

Don't be pedantic.

The main control spells require Concentration. You're turning the game into rocket tag. No thanks.

 

[Lacrymas]

But why would you CC anything when you have 2 fireballs to just kill them? Damage/scoring a kill >>>>>> everything else.

 

[Rhobar121]

But why would you CC anything when you have 2 fireballs to just kill them? Damage/scoring a kill >>>>>> everything else.

Fireball is a meme Warding Glyph is better because of how it is implemented.

 

[abija]

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games.

You do realize honor mode was released 4 months later so most people that claim BG3 is easy didn't even bother trying it? It's not like "too easy" was the only fault of the combat system.

Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

And then you go full retard.
1. This is not a mode where people can't save scum, it's a mode where people can't fail at all in a RNG driven game. And many people try ironman/hardcore modes without proper planing (including YOU) skewing the results.
2. You presented the stats wrong. Honor mode was released 30 nov, the stats you mention are from 5 dec and say that: 464 parties finished honor mode in only 5 days from release, 158 000 runs were started, 34 000 failed (so ~124 000 were still going). The very high number of starts makes it even more obvious that most of those runs are people trying to see what honor mode is about, since patch didn't give full info.

An ironman mode that records how many unsuccessful vs successful attempts there are is simply a good objective metric vs endless amounts of bullshit artists on the internet who can claim without any proof whatsoever that they faceroll a game, because you cant just quickload until RNGesus blesses your bum ass. Whats YOUR definition of difficulty?

Metrics, unless fully detailed which we don't get, are bullshit. No proof whatsoever? You can record gameplay or link to some streamer/youtuber. Like so: https://youtu.be/_AS8Y0e6ybk?t=577 (enjoy tactical difficulty clown fiesta).

 

[Desiderius]

But why would you CC anything when you have 2 fireballs to just kill them? Damage/scoring a kill >>>>>> everything else.

Fireball is a meme Warding Glyph is better because of how it is implemented.

Idk man shit is more spread out than that.

 

[Fedora Master]

The game isn't easy because one never loses a specific fight, it's easy because there is little beyond deliberately fucking up a build or massively bad rolls that prevents progress. You don't need to understand the mechanics involved well, you don't need particularly involved approaches to any fight. The overwhelming majority of encounters can be brute-forced on Tactician.
Honour Mode doesn't sound particularly smart either, since the one save limit is entirely arbitrary.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The game isn't easy because one never loses a specific fight, it's easy because there is little beyond deliberately fucking up a build or massively bad rolls that prevents progress. You don't need to understand the mechanics involved well, you don't need particularly involved approaches to any fight. The overwhelming majority of encounters can be brute-forced on Tactician.
Honour Mode doesn't sound particularly smart either, since the one save limit is entirely arbitrary.

Larian also thoughtfully provided their players with numerous exploits that can be abused; an incomplete list:

1. Explosive barrels, both environmental and portable
2. Deficient AI in combat, especially pathfinding issues
3. Grease spell/bottles
4. Shoving or otherwise knocking enemies into an abyss (or at least a long fall)
5. Stealth in combination with a means of luring one enemy at a time (a cantrip exists for this)
6. Levels in different character classes; particular combinations are overpowered
7. Respeccing party members, which also replenishes them, for just a small fee
8. Replacing a party member, who has expended spells and other abilities, with a fresh one from camp
9. Long resting frequently, due to plentiful camp supplies

 

[Yosharian]

Did anyone who is "smashing" BG3's combat play honor difficulty?

I am playing honor mode and got my shit pushed in by the hag early on so I continued with dishonor. So its just tactician on a single save now, except the bosses still have their legendary actions, which do increase their difficulty quite a bit I feel. There's plenty of pushover fights but there's also plenty of hard ones and often I'm surprised by which are which.

Honor mode stats are quite revelatory that most people who claim BG3 is an easy game are just lying, a per usual with challenging games. Larian published stats earlier this month that showed only ~400 parties had completed an honor run (as in without dying once) out of ~150,000 honor attempts. It sort of reminds me of the age old phenomena of people saying an rpg is easy while it conveniently lapses their mind that they reloaded on some given fight like 40 times to pass it, I mean fill the blanks people said this about BG2 too. A mode where people cant save scum gives lie to the bullshitters.

OTOH, I think Larian have missed a trick by focusing their efforts on the AI behaviors and abilities for difficulty modes, instead of attacking the resources made available to players. A common criticism is that you can long rest pretty much all the time with no consequence and that is still true even on higher difficulties, you just find an abundance of food throughout the world without even trying, and the game is constantly throwing potions and scrolls at you. An obvious starting point for any player made difficulty mods in the future would be to address the insane amount of resources given to players. Having to strategically balance your rests would make for a significantly different campaign and also probably incentivize gold towards buying resources instead of kind of afterthought it currently is.

Dude the mode only just came out. Honour mode really isn't that hard.

There are still tons of exploits in the game that make it fucking piss easy if you know what you're doing.

TB OH Monk using Elixirs?
Hire 12 mercs then make them all Transmutation Wizards and give yourself free Resistance to everything?
Dip Wizard on every spellcaster?
Swords Bard doing literally double the damage of every other martial for the majority of the game?
Greater Invisibility cheese?
You already mentioned that you can long rest after every fight...

Hell just by going pure Sorc you basically win the game after like, level 5.

Stop acting like a cheap Ironman mode suddenly solved the lack of difficulty in this game.

 

[Yosharian]

How to fix the game in like a week's worth of coding, max:

1: introduce scaling hp bonuses that start off soft and start scaling hard towards the endgame. Raphael should not have 666 HP for fuck's sake. That's like, half an action for a well-built monk. (Hyperbole but you get the idea). At endgame most enemies should have at least double their current hp and bosses should probably have about 3x, maybe more.

2: long rest costs should increase with level, maybe 3x-4x current costs towards endgame.

3: vendors should NEVER restock items like elixirs, elixir components, rare items, scrolls, etc. potions and supplies are fine, you should be able to buy those, but not rarer potions.

4: vendors should not restock items on level-up.

5: Swords Bard can't shoot same target twice.

6: vendors don't sell Elixir of Frost Giant Strength.

7: use 5E's restrictions on spells cast per turn.

8: buffs, special items like Transmutation stones, etc don't work when the party member who cast/made them isn't present.

9: ramp up Greater Invisibility DC scaling by a factor of at least 2-3x, give strong enemies/bosses true sight

10: Tavern Brawler gives proficiency bonus instead of STR modifier

11: wet does an extra 50% damage, not double

12: scribe scroll only works if you have enough Wiz levels

13: strong enemies use spells etc to avoid chasm deaths

14: one respec per character in honour mode, except for Tav who gets none

15: bosses have the Alert feat

16: allow players to set Custom Difficulty rules in honour mode to increase difficulty, such as hiding Perception dice rolls etc

Wow that was hard

Can't fix Sorc but that solves 95% of the game's issues