recommended difficulty for BG3 player?

[HappyDay™]

i played throught BG3, is Pathfinder very different? i want a decent challenge but i dont want to save scum ever fight

[canuck250]

Start on story, raise difficulty/drop it back down depending on the difficulty with your current party. The difficulty difference player to player or run to run is huge and that depends on the party and builds you use. This game is much crunchier for numbers and there are a lot of sources and funky to get lost in the sauce over.

[Mr Fred]

Without even exaggerating BG3 ruleset had about 80% of the content dnd 3.5 and pathfinder 1.0 cut for streamlining purpose so yeah stick to story mode.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Story mode.
Even ignore that pathfinder is a billion times more conviluted then D&D 5e.
Owncast love overstatting enemies.
To the point even story mode fights arent auto wins.

But the real reason is that pathfinder has many trap builds.
The higher the difficulty the less race, class and feat combination become viable.

Just remember:
+1 to hit isnt fun but it is better then 90% of the facy sounding stuff.
It is all about raising your stats as high as possible.

I recommend a melee class for the first time for this reason.
In baldurs get 3 the difference between expert and story is the amount of hp you need to destroy.
In pathfinder it is the amount of +1 you need to overcome ac of 40 to 80.
You will suffer on higher difficulty.
Even the best will have days where there rolls are just so bad that even the most overpowered builds fail.

That is pathfinder.
Single minded devotion to a single weapon type gets you more results then any kind of versatility or adaptiable.

Now on the plus side if you are singular devoted to 1 thing you can become near unstoppible in that thing.
There are youtube video's of people 1 shotting unfair enemy by having such high stats that nothing short of nature 20 will save them.

A simple example: A well designed fighter can have an ac of 40.
This means that if an enemy with 12+ to hit tries to hit you it will fail because 20+12 is 32.
And that wont hit you.
This is how to approach pathfinder or to use its nickname.
Mathfinder.

It is all about choicing to focus one mastering one thing.

For example:
Grease is the best early game spell because every single turn/step requires a save vs spell dc.
With the right build that spell dc is 21 at level 1.
Meaning your enemy needs to role a 21 or higher not to fall.
And early game very few enemies can do that without relabliy.
Now add selective feat which makes it so your allies dont get effected by your spell and boom.
Free wins.

Or turning lann into a hunter and giving him a horse.
Sure it will make him less usefull later on but early on just having a horse give you a massive advantage.
More speed, extra hard to hit and easy to shart teamwork feats that give you an edge.
Hell i use mage armor on horses because it makes them a good early game tank and gives the melee guy on time free hitting chance.
Also they can use full actions because the horse movement action was used to get into melee.

In short.
If you are going to play pathfinder play on lower difficulty and slowly increase it as you learn just how to exploit the system.

Summoning at lower difficulty is a fire and forget missle.
At higher difficulty the only role of summons in arrow catcher.
Aka take the damage so you dont have too.

And never forget.
Everyone has bad roll days.
It doesnt matter how overpowered you are sometimes you just roll ♥♥♥♥.

But yeah.
Dont play on higher then story mode until you understand how to exploit the system.
Pathfinder normal makes expert baldurs gate 3 look like a cakewalk.

[Duck]

Just play on normal. Enemies are weaker and do less damage on that diff. You won't save scum every fight but you'll have some tough encounters that'll teach you to examine and understand why it's tough and what you might need to overcome it which is part of learning the game.

[mk11]

Did you mean "ever" or "every"? For "ever" you could give story mode a try. Trouble is most fights are easy and then there are some with twists that you may get caught by. For "every" though Normal should be fine. Probably best not to go Core because that removes respec and there is a good chance you will mess something up in the builds.

Playing turn-based generally makes it easier but slower. Although, there are a few battles where RTWP makes them trivial because you can kite. Doing the level-ups for companions will make for stronger characters but risks messing them up.

[Soul]

i'd recommend normal.... and the ability to read.....

one of the biggest issues I see is players coming over from BG3 and having a hard time because they didnt bother reading tutorials since they were already "experts" at BG3..... the game offers a lot of details and such that the tutorials cant cover but the data is there nonetheless.... hover over everything for more details even if its not clickable and it will show you more info and such like what buffs are affecting this and that....

but also some quests have a timeframe to complete... which you would know only if you pay attention to the dialogue... and some of they dont actually tell you how long till it triggers...

[Triple G]

Normal difficulty, because on story they do like 1 damage to You. You can set it on story if You think it doesn´t work on normal, or if You really just want to play through the game without many troubles.

I haven´t played BG3 though. But as for most games the story mode is for those who focus on playing through the story, and not so much for the combat and abilities, or for someone who´s completely new to these games or the genre. I´d say normal is "quite doable". Perhaps You mess something up, but You can always change the difficulty if anything fails (which might require a reload to take effect) They have put some nasty encounters in the early game, but on normal they at least do something - so You need to figure out a counter for it, while they´re not super deadly with weaker critical damage, and less damage overall, so it´s less likely that they just one hit You...

Personally i would recommend real time, but with slow motion. Configure a button on the mouse for it if You have any. Pressing and holding it will do slow motion (in 95% of the cases, sometimes You need to do it again), and releasing it would pause the game. Perhaps adjust some settings about icons above the people, that You always see what they do, to know when they can take the next action. You can change as long as it fills up. That´s imho the best of the two worlds. Real time is a bit fast with many people doing things simultaneously (and having no AI to speak of), and turn based is quite slow, but most of all not super bug free and You might feel some player focus there. Sometimes it shows the wrong action or path, or doesn´t to the action, which can be frustrating, while it´s of course superior in seeing how the mechanics in combat work in detail.

[Zalie]

Normal is a fine starting point if you are new to the pathfinder ruleset. Most fights will be reasonably easy but there will definitely be encounters that will challenge you.

Story mode you will pretty much just walk all over everything and get no challenge. It's fine to drop down to this if you get stuck on some encounter but I would not recommend actually playing the whole game on it.

[Soul]

I highly suggest story to start for learning... Casual when you get the basics, and normal once you begin to feel confident... and then turn it up further when you feel like being reminded you are mortal.

[canuck250]

Overall the difficulty imo shouldn’t be a set and forget. Lots of vets change difficulty as the game goes. Act 1 is by far the hardest act, then it gets easier as you gain powers, so instead of starting on the highest we scale the difficulty up along with our party.

[Clangeddin.86]

I do not suggest story mode, you won't learn much and enemies will die by just point and click. Story mode is just way too easy and much easier than BG3 (and BG3 is not a difficult game at all...)

Normal or Easy are fine starting points for beginners, normal is perhaps even better if you care about learning the game mechanics and improving.

That said, the difficulty of the game goes down as the game progresses, ACT 1 is the hardest part of the game and ACT 5 is the easiest. Early ACT 3 may be tricky because you might end up in zones where you're not supposed to go right away (for example in Black Water before level 12-13), but if you know where to go first even ACT 3's difficulty quickly evaporates as well, after the first "impact".

If you feel confident, my suggestion for your first playthrough is to up the difficulty as the story progresses, in the following manner:

ACT 1 -> Easy
ACT 2 -> Normal
ACT 3 -> Daring
ACT 4 -> Core
ACT 5 -> Hard

Of course keep in mind that on higher difficulties having decent builds is important.
If you want to respec in later chapters you could just enable the respec from the difficulty options and that would turn the difficulty to "custom" while keeping the same level of challenge.

[Deo]

Start on Story and raise it up. Game has difficulty which spikes higher every act. Don't be shy to reduce difficulty if you feel like it.

You will barely learn anything on difficulties less than Unfair tho, so there is that.

[Leoscar]

That depends on what you want, really :

-Story if you don't care about understanding the mechanics much and just want to play... well the story or if you're one of those players that LARP. Both Pathfinder Kingmaker and WOTR overwhelm you with information and numbers. Expect a challenge not because it's hard but because you have no idea what's going on while ennemies have immunities, for example.

-Normal if you're willing to put some efforts into learning how to make characters that aren't just terrible (and I mean, 20 levels in one class is already a far cry from "terrible"). That's what I started Kingmaker with. It's very easy if you know the bare minimum about the different mechanics, but is otherwise going to force you to learn.

[Behemmoth]

Originally posted by HappyDay™:

i played throught BG3, is Pathfinder very different? i want a decent challenge but i dont want to save scum ever fight

Pathfinder is similar to both BG1 and BG2, whereas BG3 is similar to Divinity.

If this is your first time playing a Baldur's Gate inspired game (because BG3 is not), then you could start on Normal difficulty and decrease it if you deem necessary.

[Dre]

Story mode or custom difficulty above. Enjoy the story, and next playthroughts you can add some new options (crusade mode, etc) to the mix to add replayability. If you played BG 3 in honour mode, go into core