The Difference Between Difficulties?

[MerVidiuM]

What's the actual difference?

I know that in tactician there is harder dice rolls, there's more enemies I think and they have more health and damage etc. Is there anything else? And is there any achievements tied to the different difficulties?

[NickJ]

There is an achievement for completing the game in tactician mode, and I know that the amount of food consumed during a long rest is higher in Tactician compared to "normal" mode.

I'm waiting to do Tactician on my second playthrough, so I'll let more knowledgeable people expand.

[Darkwing†Duck]

I noticed that foes uses different spells and often throw something in you.

[BlazeRomulus]

the A.I is meaner and have more tools at their disposal compared to normal mode.

[Mao]

Health is increased and I believe the enemy has a higher chance to hit.

[TripSin]

On tactician a battle can take like 15-20 minutes while on story mode you can do that same fight in like 2 minutes because you can just one-shot most things. Your party is given more HP and stuff so that you also don't have to worry about being killed.

[Empath demon]

I'm not very far into act I, about to go in the goblin place after the sad village, but I haven't found the medium difficulty fights challenging enough to start using consumables or really tighten up my team at all. I'm considering restarting in hard but I don't want to deal with "hit myself in the face with a stick" level of difficulty. I'd be interested in people's take of the hardest mode. (that's tactician?)

[TripSin]

Originally posted by Empath demon:

I'm not very far into act I, about to go in the goblin place after the sad village, but I haven't found the medium difficulty fights challenging enough to start using consumables or really tighten up my team at all. I'm considering restarting in hard but I don't want to deal with "hit myself in the face with a stick" level of difficulty. I'd be interested in people's take of the hardest mode. (that's tactician?)

You don't have to restart the game to change difficulty. You can change it at any time you want. You can even change it in the middle of a battle.

[Nauct]

Tactician is like normal DnD difficulty

[ACS36]

VERY little difference. It's not even noticeable.

Enemies have slightly better chance to hit the player.
Player is more likely to miss enemies.

That's it. The AI is not smarter on tactician and still makes many stupid attacks.

Now players that think tactician is hard are probably biased to believe it's hard based on the virtue it's listed as the hardest difficulty. However, if you actually test the difficulty settings you'll notice it's more or less the same challenge.

Enemies don't gain HP. Enemies don't gain special abilities. There are not more enemies. Enemies don't gain levels. Enemies are not smarter or targeting the most vulnerable character.

[Deleted *******]

Originally posted by ACS36:

VERY little difference. It's not even noticeable.

Enemies have slightly better chance to hit the player.
Player is more likely to miss enemies.

That's it. The AI is not smarter on tactician and still makes many stupid attacks.

Now players that think tactician is hard are probably biased to believe it's hard based on the virtue it's listed as the hardest difficulty. However, if you actually test the difficulty settings you'll notice it's more or less the same challenge.

Enemies don't gain HP. Enemies don't gain special abilities. There are not more enemies. Enemies don't gain levels. Enemies are not smarter or targeting the most vulnerable character.

then why did 0.0% people get the achievement of completing the game on tactic difficulty ?

[TripSin]

Originally posted by ACS36:

VERY little difference. It's not even noticeable.

Enemies have slightly better chance to hit the player.
Player is more likely to miss enemies.

That's it. The AI is not smarter on tactician and still makes many stupid attacks.

Now players that think tactician is hard are probably biased to believe it's hard based on the virtue it's listed as the hardest difficulty. However, if you actually test the difficulty settings you'll notice it's more or less the same challenge.

Enemies don't gain HP. Enemies don't gain special abilities. There are not more enemies. Enemies don't gain levels. Enemies are not smarter or targeting the most vulnerable character.

You're delusional and/or insane if you think there is no noticeable difference between tactical and story. Ridiculous.

[MerVidiuM]

I play tactician myself and quite enjoy it so far, if there is indeed achievements tied to tactician I think I will continue with tactician and try the easier difficulties on my second playthrough.

Thanks for the answers so far everyone.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by MerVidiuM:

What's the actual difference?

I know that in tactician there is harder dice rolls, there's more enemies I think and they have more health and damage etc. Is there anything else? And is there any achievements tied to the different difficulties?

Lots of wrong answers in the thread.

The effects of tactician are:

• Enemies receive +30% health
  
• Enemies get +2 to hit and +2 on saves. They are NOT harder to hit (AC is the same, mostly - there are a very few number of exceptions) unless you are casting a spell at them which gives a saving throw rather than an attack roll.
  
• Enemy AI absolutely is different. It's more about the 'probabilities' of specific tactics than any 'different' tactics. But on tactician they are more likely to focus fire squishies as just one example. They are also more likely to use their nastier spells and abilities.
  
• Increased chance of environmental hazards appearing on the battle field (barrels, etc.)
  
• Long rest costs 2x as many supplies
  
• There is NOT more enemies, at all.

Note that enemies are easier to hit on the lowest difficulty, which is probably why some people think they are harder to hit on tactician, but that's simply not the case (other than the saving throw thing and handful of exceptions mentioned above).

These bonuses are easy to verify and see specifically by unpacking and looking at the game files themselves.

[FormlessGenie]

Originally posted by ACS36:

VERY little difference. It's not even noticeable.

Enemies have slightly better chance to hit the player.
Player is more likely to miss enemies.

That's it. The AI is not smarter on tactician and still makes many stupid attacks.

Now players that think tactician is hard are probably biased to believe it's hard based on the virtue it's listed as the hardest difficulty. However, if you actually test the difficulty settings you'll notice it's more or less the same challenge.

Enemies don't gain HP. Enemies don't gain special abilities. There are not more enemies. Enemies don't gain levels. Enemies are not smarter or targeting the most vulnerable character.

This is not true. when swapping to a higher difficulty. Enemies do in fact gain a large amount of health and tend to hit your characters more often and for more damage. For Example. in the prologue. if playing on balanced the enemy would have 8 HP. but if you played on explorer, that same enemy would change to 5 HP.

[oddball]

I honestly can't tell the difference between tactician and the beta gameplay difficulty setting. The only fight with a noticeable difference was against the demon commander on the nautilus who I couldn't bring down before his cambuds showed up. But I think that was more because he in particular was heavily buffed.