Proving My Point About High Ground Advantage

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Particularly as it pertains to ranged attacks (archery). Obviously, one could make a different argument for melee attacks from high ground, or that spell attacks are inherently different, but the majority of high ground attacks are made with bows, so this is my baseline for the argument.

In the past, when we were arguing about high ground advantage (and Larian eventually replaced advantage with +2/-2 to hit, arguably making high ground even more advantageous than it was before because now you could stack it with advantage if you got advantage from another source, for example stealth) I pointed out that high ground doesn't necessarily make attacks more accurate, but it does add more range, and this might be a better way to give high ground advantage to archers in BG3 - increase the range by about 10% or so.

And now, here is proof:

https://youtu.be/av8WTx_Gl8g?si=HtcOOJ1EETXBYhSl

Me: 1
Larian: 0

[id795078477]

Tod's workshop? You're a man of culture. Have my points.

But. You're trying to make deaf listen. Realistic and logical ranged combat in a fantasy game? Silly you, it's a fantasy, anything goes (translate: whatever shenanigans happen, "it's fantasy" is a universal excuse)

In EA I was arguing about the shooting distances, projectile "arcs" and other nonsensical things that Larian did about ranged combat using much the same videos of recreations of the medieval combat in real time. Did anything change? Yeah, they've doubled down on the nonsense.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by id795078477:

Tod's workshop? You're a man of culture. Have my points.

But. You're trying to make deaf listen. Realistic and logical ranged combat in a fantasy game? Silly you, it's a fantasy, anything goes (translate: whatever shenanigans happen, "it's fantasy" is a universal excuse)

Yeah sure, but the point is that we were originally arguing against Larian for giving advantage to high ground because it was too powerful - so they changed it to +2 to hit - but this makes it EVEN MORE POWERFUL than before, and is a big source of power creep and how easy it is to trivialize encounters in this game because Larian simply refuses to think through all the consequences of their changes. There is no "high ground advantage" in D&D.

I posted this just to show them that it isn't realistic either - hitting something from even further away may even be harder (notice how the archer didn't even come close to hitting the target from the battlements). Archery in massed combat was about volume of missiles, not the marksmanship of the archer (which is only relevant in target shooting tournaments and hunting).

The current problem with Larian's implementation of "high ground advantage", even from a gameplay perspective, is that it can be combined with advantage (typically from stealth, but there are other sources as well) making it even more broken than it was before this change was implemented.

Instead of a +2 to accuracy (which also stretches the principle behind Bounded Accuracy to it's breaking point), high ground should confer nothing more than +10% range. This would give players a reason to seek it without making it completely overpowered.

[id795078477]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Loveless:

Originally posted by id795078477:

Tod's workshop? You're a man of culture. Have my points.

But. You're trying to make deaf listen. Realistic and logical ranged combat in a fantasy game? Silly you, it's a fantasy, anything goes (translate: whatever shenanigans happen, "it's fantasy" is a universal excuse)

Yeah sure, but the point is that we were originally arguing against Larian for giving advantage to high ground because it was too powerful - so they changed it to +2 to hit - but this makes it EVEN MORE POWERFUL than before, and is a big source of power creep and how easy it is to trivialize encounters in this game because Larian simply refuses to think through all the consequences of their changes. There is no "high ground advantage" in D&D..

Were we arguing that high-ground advantage is too good? Yep, sure, I can stand by that.
Was anyone arguing that they need to add a +2 to attack for that's also stackable with another advantage? Can't answer for anyone, but I would never ask for it. Because it's just logical that this "fix" makes it more powerful because it allows to add a +2 on the very same thing that was there before.