Why is there no balance between classes in the game?

[.pleasures]

First of all I should say, I've never played D&D and don't know much about it. So my point of view is based just on 70h in Baldur's Gate 3 on Tactician Difficulty and on experience in other RPG's. I'm probably wrong, and I hope you can explain why. So, my question is, why are tanks so powerful in this game?

My group currently includes my character (Rogue), Karlach, Shadowheart and Wyll. All level 7. Karlach does more damage than all three of the others combined. At the same time, she does not sacrifice anything for such damage: she also has the highest AC and HP and never dies, highest carrying capacity, she can shove or throw anyone across the entire arena and can't be shoved herself, she has increased movement speed (12 meters instead of 9) coupled with long jumps and on top of that she doesn't need rests! It doesn't look fair at all compared to other classes. Karlach can reach any enemy and each turn does f*cking 3 attacks for 20+ damage each with 80%+ chance, while my Rogue needs to fullfill the conditions to do his only one Sneak Attack with nearly the same damage as 1-1.5 regular Karlach's attack. Not to mention his worse survivability and everything else. Wyll (or Warlocks in general) is sooo pathetic in fights. His melee attacks or Eldritch Blast do 2x10 dmg if you're REALLY lucky. But let's be honest, it's a miracle if he doesn't miss at least one of two with his 50-55% accuracy. It is usually just 1x7 dmg per turn. The same goes for Shadowheart. However, I understand that dealing damage is not her goal.

As for the wizards/sorcerers... They look disgusting overall. They need a long rest after every single fight, they lose 50% hp by the first hit, do less damage and often can't hit at all because of half the spells in the game (blindness, silence, fog clouds, counterspell and many many other spells that do nothing to 2H heavy armor ungabunga). The fact that the enemies focus primarily on them doesn't help either. Mages have some good AoE, but it's better to use scrolls and throwables when it's really necessary than to always keep a useless wizard on your team "just in case". When I had Gale on my team, he had to spend all his action points to heal himself each turn, lol. It just doesn't make sense.

It seems like if I only had paladins, barbarians and fighters in my group, any fight would be over before the opponent's first turn. Even in a long fight my squad won't die because of the high AC and HP. Of course there is not only combat in the game, but paladins have high charisma, you can always increase perception and other necessary attributes to your other fighters to get a well-balanced squad outside of fights. You can replace one 2H destroyer with a cleric for healing, haste and that sweety perk with 1d4 for ability checks, but that's it. The other classes are obviously not worth it.

Typically in RPG's and class-based games, the higher the survivability is, the lower the mobility and damage are. There are also rock-paper-scissors-type variants RPG's, where one class is superior to some, but at the same time severely inferior to other. However, Baldur's Gate 3 (and I'm guessing D&D as well) has tank gigachads and other classes that can be sorted in descending order of efficiency, with wizards/sorcerers last who have no damage, no powerful utilities or buffs for the group, no survivability, and no characteristics for open world activities like lockpicking/trading/dialogs.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I missing something?

[Shozou]

quality troll

[hannibal_pjv]

Different characters classes are good at different things. How surprising...
I am quite sure that you can easily end the game with what ever character class. I am slow player, so not gonna test all possible class combinations.

[.pleasures]

Originally posted by Shozou:

quality troll

I swear you, I am not trolling at all. Am I completely wrong with my view on tanks in this game?

[Mr Fred]

Originally posted by 61:

Originally posted by Shozou:

quality troll

I swear you, I am not trolling at all. Am I completely wrong with my view on tanks in this game?

Multiclass exist, pretty much every caster will want to start with 1 fighter to wear armor and shield and add a 2nd lvl later on for the extra action.

[.pleasures]

Originally posted by hannibal_pjv:

Different characters classes are good at different things. How surprising...
I am quite sure that you can easily end the game with what ever character class. I am slow player, so not gonna test all possible class combinations.

My point is,tanks are good at everything. And other classes have their weaknesses in different things.

[Rats]

Dungeons and Dragons has a guideline of 6-8 medium or hard encounters per day, with two short rests in between those encounters, and encounters not necessarily being fights (if you have to expend a 2nd level spell doing knock, or some HP to a trap, that is an encounter too)

Since Rogues, Fighters, Barbarians, etc each have comparatively little that resets on a long rest and the other classes have things that reset on long & short rests, a game that does dozens of encounters between rests will make those who run out of resources less powerful.

Casters get more and more powerful as they go up in levels, the game stops at 12 for a reason, 7th level spells often are I win buttons. Even 4th level spells like polymorph are nerfed in BG3 for playability. Imagine turning your players into a giant ape at level 7, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex at level 8. In game? Just sheeps an enemy like in World of Warcraft.

BG3 also gives out WAY more potions than a DND table would give out, and you can't share the potion between 4 players like you can in game currently.

There also aren't exploding barrels everywhere to make things easier on the players.

This is a video game, and not everything translates.

[zpc]

@61

In addition to the excellent summary given by Rats:

I'd say you are really missing the DnD googles here. Wizards and other magic users (clerics, sorcerers) will get very strong the more levels they have. Also, there is special gear which can augment your magic characters a lot.

Barbarians (Karlach) and paladins are very strong physical fighters - as is the fighter of course (who really does nothing else but to train himself and his proficiency with his gear). So they should excel in combat, especially if it's about a physical confrontation only. They might lack other defenses though (wisdom, intelligence, high enough dexterity).

Wizards and sorcerers will obliterate groups of enemies [later] and help to make it [even] easier for melee fighters in the party to mob up the enemies (hold person, charm, sleep, fear). A cleric can bring the whole party back to live while fending of an overwhelming amount of enemies (spirit guardian, spiritual weapons). More so if it goes against undead (turn undead, destroy undead).

The typical DnD game also isn't solely about combat. You should have noticed that by now as you reached level 7. The maps have no random mobs, all fights are there for a reason. And some of them (even "boss encounters") can be won by other character traits (persuasion, deception, helping, communicating at all (animals)). And there are also the character defining extra traits.

And of course, besides the mechanic is a lot of roleplay. A paladin might talk a devil into letting him go like a bard could do it (high CHA) but a paladin is bound to his oath. So he might have to destroy the villain no matter what - or loose his oath. A barbarian might be too unrestrained to even listen to the devil and just charge him.

[Robineus]

Ok well first of all my Laezel is the most competent in combat it's true, but I designed a bard as my MC who is very competent in all the other things in the game like passing conversational checks or thieving and so on. My cleric is good at keeping people alive in the harder fights, generally a balanced party works by having a variety of skills which includes one person who is better at killing than the others.

[ACS36]

Classes are pretty fairly balanced. At least on paper. Still, every class is viable, even on tactician.

The game suffers from two core problems that really break class balance in the video game though and trivializes the difficulty the game has to offer.

1. Game economy.
-Camp Supplies are too common. It's too easy to take long rests. This is something a DM needs to monitor to avoid players abusing the mechanic.
-Scrolls are too common and anyone can use them.
-Really easy to get your entire party into great gear. It skews the power level considerably.
-Powerful potions like the speed potion are too easy too abundant in the game.

2. Encounters are poorly designed and don't put pressure on player resources.

3. A lesser problem but probably the next issue with the game is homebrew mechanics. It's very easy to break concentration in BG3. It's very easy to stack weapon buffs that you wouldn't be able to in pen and paper. IT's very easy to abuse mechanics that are too powerful for the action economy within the game.

The rules for D&D designed with DM's in mind. Something a computer game can't easily replicate. A dm acts as a judge and will have a better sense of power and strength of a party than a computer game will.

[Skandranon]

It's entirely possible, even likely, you built them badly. Martial classes are easier to get right.

It's also very likely you just don't know what the good spells are for the Wizard. Direct damage is great and all, but crowd control and CC is what they bring like noone else.

If you're using tavern brawler on Karlach, its both OP and probably bugged and definitely getting nerfed at some point.

[0xxian]

Later on not having caster CC is going to be miserable for a party of all fight/barbs/paladins the shear power of Gale Casually ending encounters with up-cast hold person is nuts. Very few foes have good wisdom saves and you can push spell DCs through the roof with the +save DC gear items, one spell cast you not only shut down the actions of you foes saving you from damage and the resources to heal it up you also set up auto crits for your rogues and barbs/fighters. If you casting more than 1-2 spells in most encounters something has gone wrong because wizards and sorcs properly geared and leveled should be essentially ending them with their control effects.

A well placed control spell trivialises encounters If you are using your casters to do damage your wasting their potential, casters set things up for the fighters to knock down. Also don't be afraid to have the caster just leave after they have cast the control effect often we you can just walk back down the corridor or round a corner and that will scupper the foes attempts to target and break your concentration.

Your also really going to miss counter-spell when an enemy caster does this to you late game.

[PaloG]

Physical melee characters like barbarian, fighter, monk and Moon Circle Druid are generally more straightforward and easy to build to be effective so it's not surprising they feel more powerful. However that comes with a lower ceiling for them and a much lower ability for utility.

Wizards, some Cleric builds and spellcasting Druids for example excel in crowded fights, either through AoE damage or crowd control. They generally have a harder/less useful early game than other classes but when they hit lvl 3 spells they start taking off exponentially.

Other Cleric builds and more support oriented Druids excel in buffing your allies and debuffing your enemies. Bless and Bane are two excellent examples of amazing low level utility spells that can carry you till the very late game.

Sorcerers are like a heavy magical nuke. At later levels with their metamagic you can delete bosses with 200+ HP in a turn or two easily. And even before that the damage they can dish out with Twin and Quick spells is nothing to scoff at.

Bard is a swiss knife. They don't really specialise in anything but they can do pretty much everything adequately.

Warlocks I haven't played around with enough to actually have a decent opinion on but the fact they always cast their spells at the highest possible level for them and getting their spells slots back on a short rest means they can pretty much go all out in every fight. And Eldritch Blast with the right Invocations are definitely the highest damage dealing cantrip, so even after they've expended their slots they still remain useful for the remainder of the fight.

Rogues are among the trickiest to build and play but if done correctly they should outdamage pretty much everyone else except offensive spellcasters. And their Stealth/Sleight of hand bonuses open up a lot of different avenues to approaching fights or RP.

Rangers and Paladins I don't have any experience with so can't comment on those.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Mr Fred:

Originally posted by 61:

I swear you, I am not trolling at all. Am I completely wrong with my view on tanks in this game?

Multiclass exist, pretty much every caster will want to start with 1 fighter to wear armor and shield and add a 2nd lvl later on for the extra action.

Isn't it just another proof, that Warriors are broken? If CASTERS are forced to multiclass into them in order to keep up?

[Trapmaker]

Originally posted by Mr Fred:

Originally posted by 61:

I swear you, I am not trolling at all. Am I completely wrong with my view on tanks in this game?

Multiclass exist, pretty much every caster will want to start with 1 fighter to wear armor and shield and add a 2nd lvl later on for the extra action.

Except this is blatantly wrong, A sorcerer can have 16 armor at lvl 1 and if you take shield you can have 21 armor on a reaction (For a spell slot granted) there's also mage armor for pretty much anyone else which puts their natural AC at 13+dex (Again depending on your build more than enough) druids get wildshape which is basically ablative HP and clerics get actual armor profs.

Also to OP i dont know what you're doing with your casters if they need to long rest after every fight, all i can tell you is that a sorc or wizard with the right build can dominate combat through either CC or direct damage.

[Minnzy]

Karlach is seriously doing her fair share of combat but my wizard stays well and truly on top of the group for overall in and out of combat power. Karlach smashes so much better when the boss can't get off the floor laughing his arse off.