EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Yes. This is typical for CRPGs designed for solo play. BG3, like other similar games, also allows co-op, but overall solo "you play every character" play is the intended experience.
D&D 5E You Cant Fix The Class Imbalances IMHO
- Thread starter Zardnaar
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TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
And ultimately, for all its brilliance, BG3 is still a CRPG. Where D&D spellcasters shine is in leveraging their resources outside of combat to shift the narrative in their direction, which isn't something a CRPG can truly capture.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Even then, BG3 spellcasters are insanely powerful, and apart from the very small set of situations where you have to watch how many long rests you take, you get TONS of benefits from blowing all your spells ASAP and then long resting. In most cases? You can LR as often as you like. The only consequences I'm aware of (noting that I haven't gotten more than my toes dipped in Act 2 because I'm playing in six different co-op files and none of them is progressing at all quickly) are that certain characters may die or disappear because you didn't address their problems quickly enough, which is an absolute slap-on-the-wrist problem.
Well, there's also a certain nonstandard Game Over if you kill Gale (or let him die), don't revive him, and then take two long rests. But that, I think, is pretty clearly an exception.
Aldarc
Legend
Which is also an aspect that a lot of the "strongest classes in 5e" articles I see often overlook. They often rank a strong class in terms of DPR. But D&D spellcasters, much as you say, shift the narrative in their direction, even circumventing the need for combat. One of the biggest things that made the "God Wizard" or "God Druid" gods in 3E was not their DPR but, rather, their summons. Summons would force foes to spend their actions on them instead of player characters.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
BG3 makes it very easy for spellcasters to wear armour, and hence get the same buffs.
As well as removing pretty much any penalties for multiclassing.
No one cared about "class balance" when they designed that game. And it's better for it.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
A playstyle in which balance is not necessary is D&D as it was originally conceived, because balance did not exist as a concept when D&D was created.
As suggested, if you do favour a playstyle in which balance matters, other games cater to that much better than D&D does. Although it's a shame there isn't much support for 4e clones. But the numbers seem to suggest that playstyle is not broadly popular, and therefore not a profitable market to cater for.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Tell that to the Cleric. It was literally developed to balance out Sir Fang, the vampire character that was OP.
Tell that to the (genuinely clever) idea that heavy armor is an XP penalty you wear for protection: XP=GP means that banking some of your carry weight as armor is an XP penalty, but it makes you more likely to survive. Dare you take the risk? This is a form of game balance. It's certainly balance with a different focus, but it is balance nonetheless.
Tell that to the carefully designed random item tables, which specifically favor Fighters, as a counterbalance to the inherent but complicated power of Wizards. Or the XP tables, or the spell interruption rules, or...
Gygax cared about making a balanced game. His goals differed from the goals of modern D&D design (as one might expect!). But he wanted to make an effective game for those goals. That required making things which balance against one another, because if there were an exploitable dominant strategy, his players would have exploited it. That's how things were done back then.
A well-balanced game offers distinct options which can't be simply subjected to a calculation to determine which is best. Ideally, it offers a huge variety of such choices, but combinatoric explosion usually means that there's a limit to what is feasible to design. So a broad swathe is about the best one can expect.
everything is subject to some sort of calculation. If you don't use math the guys that critique your design will. In any game where there are successes and failure's math can be used to measure it.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I did not say that math was irrelevant.
I said that it could not be simply reduced to a brute calculation: pick the thing with the biggest number and go.
Good, well-balanced games offer multiple choices where the calculations cannot account for the differences, and thus fail to provide a compelling reason to choose. Instead, a well-balanced game forces value judgments. E.g., "You could dual wield, which lets you make a lot of attacks but results in you dealing less damage with each attack. Or you could go two-handed weapon, which will hit hard, but more rarely, so it's high risk, high reward. They both end up doing essentially the same average damage, so it's more a matter of what you prefer in terms of feat support and items. Dual wielding is pretty versatile but expensive and not very focused. Big two-handers are the reverse, specialized and cheap, but inflexible."
That's a situation where mathematical analysis cannot guide you to one obvious singular correct choice. The player must make a value judgment about what they like better, what sounds more appropriate, what makes more sense in the context the player faces. Etc.
Believe me, I'm a huge advocate for doing the hard, tedious work of actual statistical analysis of game design. You do that hard math work so that the resulting game offers choices that differ primarily in intangible or incommensurate ways, rather than in simplistic "X does 20% more damage, always choose it and ignore Y and Z."
Unbalanced games encourage such simplistic, brute calculations. Choose the thing which performs best and ignore the rest. There is a dominant strategy: exploit it. Etc.
Yes and no. You can measure various aspects of the game mathematically. But what aspects? How much weight do you put on any one feature? If a class is a glass cannon and another class falls slightly behind on DPR but is much more likely to survive which class is better? I also don't think that any white room analysis will ever do justice to a game as open ended as D&D. There are just too many assumptions, too many approaches. Is every fight in a dungeon with relatively tight quarters where the enemy is forced to approach from one direction in fireball formation? Are encounters started close enough that enemies with just a move action get into combat or do they start at longbow distance? On and on and on.
End of the day all I care about is that people have a class that they have fun playing and that the people playing feel like they significantly contribute to the game. For me, people I've played with? I don't see a major issue with fighters. Based on actual play number? Ditto.
