How hard is Tactican for a newbie ?

[Tam]

I want to try the hardest difficulty.
Question is - does this difficulty require hard minmaxing ? Cheesing ladders of boxes every fight etc etc ?
Balanced difficulty didnt seem hard anough, went through act1 without major problems.

[🎃 Claire 🎃]

I'm a complete newbie to dnd and the classes it has, but I play a lot of tactics games including divinity original sin 2, the previous game by the developers. Tactician has been very easy for me, and I haven't had to do any minmaxing outside of just respeccing my characters a few times to have better or different builds when one starts to stale.

[ThiccMilkers007]

The hardest difficulty is less difficult than Honor Mode in DOS2. I find Hard more in BG3 to be honestly easier than I expected. But it makes sense considering how they have to market the game as playable for a larger playerbase.

[JOHN HELLDIVER]

I'm on tactician. I don't play dnd much but just spamming hordes of summons and transformitive abilities. It can make u think a bit tho

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

They essentially just take the bullet sponge method and make everything tougher. Higher hp, higher AC, better hit bonuses, maybe an extra ability/spell.

I found Tactician to simply be more tedious than fun, and yes you will most likely need to use more exploits to win.

I'm playing a solo game on Tactician right now, and I've just got to around the Blighted Village, at level 3.

It gets progressively easier as you go, because you will gear up and collect consumables (don't forget to take every explosive barrel you come across), and you will farm xp so you can win through outleveling encounters as much as you can.

Never fight fair on Tactician.

It's less of a fun challenge, and more of a tedious slog. Combat is less satisfying, and cheesing every encounter (because you have to) actually makes me feel less satisfied when I win because it feels like I'm cheating more than I'm using good strategy. I suppose 'cheating' is good strategy, right? Win at any cost?

[Tam]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Loveless:

They essentially just take the bullet sponge method and make everything tougher. Higher hp, higher AC, better hit bonuses, maybe an extra ability/spell.

I found Tactician to simply be more tedious than fun, and yes you will most likely need to use more exploits to win.

I'm playing a solo game on Tactician right now, and I've just got to around the Blighted Village, at level 3.

It gets progressively easier as you go, because you will gear up and collect consumables (don't forget to take every explosive barrel you come across), and you will farm xp so you can win through outleveling encounters as much as you can.

Never fight fair on Tactician.

It's less of a fun challenge, and more of a tedious slog. Combat is less satisfying, and cheesing every encounter (because you have to) actually makes me feel less satisfied when I win because it feels like I'm cheating more than I'm using good strategy. I suppose 'cheating' is good strategy, right? Win at any cost?

Thats my biggest concern.
I've heard about AI being smarter, using pushes etc etc but being forced to minefield every location with barrels or abusing chests highground feels is not fun.
My question is how hard does it require to cheese, because people above said they are quite fine.

[Jaggid Edje]

Best to make the decision knowing precisely what the difficulty actually changes.
Here are the effects of Tactician difficulty:

• Enemies have 30% more hit points (health)
  
• Enemies have +2 to hit you (that's +10% to their chance to hit)
  
• Enemies have +2 on their saving throws (that's +10% to their chance to resist your spells, etc.)
  
• Enemies use more advanced AI tactics, including being more inclined to focus fire your squishiest party members.
  
• Greater chance of "environmental hazards" appearing on the battlefield
  
• Long Rest costs 80 camp supplies (vs. 40 on normal difficulty).

It's really not all that much of a difficulty jump from the middle difficulty level. If you can think at all tactically instead of just wanting to brute force through every encounter, you will be fine.

It's not at all like DOS2 where you have to use barrels all the time. In BG3, most fights don't even have barrels around to be used (though they are more common in tactician difficulty).

[Dark Thoughts]

Good D&D knowledge is probably more important. If you don't know D&D then I highly suggest to avoid the highest difficulty. You'll just not understand all the rules that make up the gameplay and mechanics, which will be very frustrating.