Difficulty, Complexity, and the Single Player Experience | Design Club

[Music] Good time zone, internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet right now. It's like not like not like at all right, but it's like right now right now. Time is the soup. I'm your humble host, Will, joined as always by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff.
Hi to the people, Jeff. Hey everybody, I am Jeffrey Zach in the studio director of Extra Credit Studios and more importantly for this at the moment longtime game designer and person currently replaying Balders's Gate 3 who has thoughts with a history well not as much that I do anymore
of somebody who used to break games for fun or builds and OP things.
Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, so we should we should be very um I don't know that I feel like lots of people are going to look at that thumbnail and be like, "This is clickbait." No, no, Jeff.

Jeff explained it to me and I could tell where he was going with this and I was like, "No, that's pretty broken." Um not in the way that like one would break Binding of Isaac, right? or like anything, but I I would say more broken in the overpowered um
the traditional sense of oh
yeah,
you're just stomping through the game in a way that was by the the designers andor balance team.
Correct. Yeah. Poor poor balance team for Balders's Gate. I don't
they have
they did a good job. I mean, just straight up, I'm I'm going to say they did a good job. But certain games like Isaac, Slay the Spire, Monster Train, part kind of the whole part of the playthrough is how do you break it this time to get powerful enough to take on the bosses at the end that expect you to OP yourself multiple time to multiple different levels like Correct. That's part of the game,
right? Like a lot of other games,

right?
That isn't the part of the game.
Yeah. In fact, uh here here's your fun Isaac fact. Did you know that um some Isaac bosses, they had to introduce um a specific mechanic that the players have taken to calling boss armor? It's um a maximum percentage of the boss's HP that it can take per unit time. So you can do it all at once or you can do it in a bunch of little hits, but it will it's like micro staggering the boss's HP bar because otherwise there are builds in Isaac that will simply delete an endgame boss because the number of multipliers available once you've fully broken the game is so high as an example. And in some cases that's almost a weird crutch
because
correct
like if you're talking as a pure design a pure design exercise of we're building a game that you can break to do a thing. Oops, we did it too much. Let's throw in

an artificial gating mechanic that slows it down.
Right. Right.
Means that somewhere in there actually Spire does it too but in a very straightforward way like the last fight the heart.
Oh yeah. The 800 hit points. You can do a maximum of 200 per round
at ascension counter. I think it's 250 and lower, but like
we're talking about 20, right? Yeah.
Okay. Assent on the ascension that people play on for like recording records and other things.
Yeah. Yeah. At the top difficulty. Yeah. It's it's you can do a maximum of one quarter.
Yeah. And that's in addition to every move you do, you take damage. Mhm.
Like they they have a double. Like that's part of the challenge to me. The the artificial cap. I don't know. Maybe it's because it's the only MOS. Maybe because they actually put a little countdown meter for you. It doesn't feel as bad.
I think they're like
here's your scorecard. I also think

there's some amount of um different kinds of games will be broken in different ways along different axes to accomplish different things.
Absolutely
right. And so, um, in Spire, right, because it's turnbased and because there's, um, not mandatory damage, but because blocking is so much apart, you can't dodge getting hit. You can't simply don't get hit forehead, right? Um, there's a relationship between the player and incoming damage that's different than in something like Isaac, which has been pretty rigorously tested to have zero mandatory damage. You can go through the entire game and never get hit by anything. It's possible. In fact, it's required if you're playing the lost. Um, pre the holy mantle thing. Don't worry about it. Um, so like the when we're talking about

brokenness, we're talking about this, it's always in a context, right? I guess that's what I wanted to lead off with is that it's always in a context, right? So, we talk about Balders's Gate 3. It's in Balders's Gate 3, the brokenness will be specific and appropriate to Balders's Gate, not
like in some more general way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, Will, actually, let's set this up here.
Yeah.
So, I've been playing D and D for a very long time, actually, since first edition with the basic red box set. Okay. which for those of you counting um is roughly four decades.
Yeah, it's before I was born.
Yes, I have played pretty much every edition of D and D backwards and forwards with the exception of I didn't play a lot of fourth. Just Yes. backwards and forwards.
How do how do how do you Okay, I'm not going to ask you. I was going to ask how backwards.
You would be surprised.
Okay. Sure. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Um, I've played in campaigns for

pretty much every edition. I have run campaigns. I've been player in campaigns. I have worked on an official D&D video game, albeit a small one. I have given talks at packs um on basically the rules mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons, specifically talking about how they have taken and written and balanced the rules. And so I'm just I'm putting this out there to say I am fairly intimately familiar with both the game and the rules system around it.
Right. But we should also clarify
that while the rules of Balders's Gate 3 are heavily inspired by Dn D, they have to do some tweaks,
right?
Yes.
Yeah. And I actually did a whole talk on packs on that actually, which was um talking about how close was Balders's Gate to DND fifth edition. And this was before 5.24, which is the one that came out last year, which is an evolution of

the fifth edition,
right?
And the answer to that is they were close. I mean, considering everything they had to do,
yes,
they were remarkably accurate. Yeah,
like I think if you came in as a casual D and D player, you might not notice that there were any real differences because it would just the interpretations they did felt natural for the transition moving from tabletop into a video game.
Yes.
And I think that's probably just the best way to sum it up is there were very few things where you looked at like that's weird,
right? And that's I think what a lot of the streamers and people who wrote the videos had the most fun was was being able to call out the here are the little things that are different that will help you optimize your game if you want to.
Yes.
Like the tavern tavern brawler feed which is pretty much useless in tabletop and is remarkably good in Boulders Gate

3.
Yeah.
Um and things like that.
Yeah. And part of what we're going to be getting to as we as we talk about this and and go through this example is how
the relationship between how difficult the game is and how complex you're willing to have it be is. Because
as someone who's distinctly played a barbarian because they needed their mental focus elsewhere, the first time we did a uh an actual play
Oh, yeah. We had this at the time in hindsight absolutely brilliance idea. We don't do this anymore because of this uh the first oneshot of having me play and produce. Not a great idea. By the way, if you're ever thinking about doing an actual play, you need a producer. You need someone who's not on camera doing all the behind the scenes cuz an actual play is so much behind the scenes. Anyway, neither here nor there. I played a barbarian.
Producing and tech. Yeah. Like Yeah. You

were playing a barbarian so you could basically concentrate on everything else.
Brain off. The flowchart for barbarian is as follows. Are we in combat? Am I raging? If yes, hit thing. Whatever the biggest angriest thing that's hitting my friends is, hit that. If I'm not raging, rage. And then go to hit the biggest scariest thing that's hitting my friends.
End flowchart. That's
you can make it more complex than that if you so desire, but you can also play like that.
But there is a cap to how good that is, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But um and so I played a lot of Boulders's Gate when it first came out, but I hit some point in act three
where I just I kind of burned out because it's a long long long game.
Yeah.
And got just like did a trip or something and came back and just
started something else and never got back to it.
Yeah. And a couple weeks ago, I was like, screw it. I want to finish Boulders's Gate. And rather than doing

the smart thing of picking up in the middle of act three where I left off, I was like, maybe I'll just start over and do it all again. And so I've been playing through all the way again. And I'm actually I just passed the point in act three where I stopped last time. So I'm into new territory.
Okay.
Which is kind of fun. But I have seen and I'm a completionist. So I've been I finished everything in act one. I finished everything in act two. I have been working my way through everything in act three.
Sure.
Because I am not planning Well, maybe I'll play it again sometime, but I'm I'm playing this with the intention that I will not be playing it again after. So, I'm seeing as much as I can see.
Yeah. And that's a good sort of standard to set with like in what way are you playing? Because like in Balders's Gate among other games like it, you could just beline straight for an ending, the worst ending, the best ending, whatever, right? So, it's good to establish that.
Yeah. And so, along the way, I've been

exploring and um playing with the game rules. And when I say broke, because I I can honestly say the game is broken based on a certain definition. I first want to say how well Larry and balanced the game.
Sure.
Like they had keep they were selling Dn D. They brought fifth edition Dn D. D and D is the most B fifth edition is the most balanced of all D and D editions that there have been to date. But that does not mean it is a balanced game. And part of the fun of these games is that there are things that are just there are choices that are better and worse. If all choices are equally the same,
the choices don't feel meaningful in the same way. You know, allowing you to make an unoptimized build or an optimized build shows that there are actually choices to be made along the way.
Yes. Um, going with that, the the kind of balance I'm going to

talk about specifically is combat balance,
okay?
Because there is also balance for the exploration phase of the game and the social phase of the game, right?
Those honestly are easier to break. for exploration. You can have, you know, if you just take a stealth party, if you pick up the pass without trace spell and maybe somebody who can cast some invisibility, you can stealth through most of the game in ways that they didn't intend.
Yeah.
Like they've set that up.
Or if you pick up a lot of movement spells,
right? And they they they have created enough fallback systems that admit of the idea that you're going to stealth around in a way they could not have foreseen specifically,
right?
But also it's gated. There are things you need to fight.
Like this isn't a deosex stealth the whole thing. You never have to kill anybody
kind of game.
Yeah.
This is D and D. You can stealth around, but there are places you're just going to have to go stomp.
Right.

Straight up. And the same with the social interactions. Like if you bring a charisma based character, a bard, a sorcerer, or a warlock, pick up something that lets you get expertise in that and have somebody with guidance in your party to add an extra D4 to your role and put on the right gear. Like you're going to be routinely getting on a 20-sided die plus 15 or higher on a roll, possibly with advantage, letting you roll two dice and take you the higher.
Yep.
Like there are ways you can do that. So, those are easier to break, but also that's not what I'm talking about because they just built the system saying, "Oh, you want to see most of the story? We're going to let you get through these, you know, stat check roles, but we're assuming you're going to get through most of them."
Sure.
Okay. Will.
Yes.
So, so let's let's talk about Yeah. So, let's talk about combat.
Let's talk about balance.
Okay. Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role playing game. They balance combat in a couple of different ways. And this is I'm going to go in pure design talk

for this. So, buckle up if you like the design. The first way that they balance it is something called action economy, which is, and it's party based. Each character gets to do basically one thing that is called an action per turn. One thing that is called a bonus action per turn. One thing that is called movement per turn. One aspect of movement per turn. Like these are defined things,
right?
You can't swing your sword 15 times. You can make a sword attack. You can't drink eight potions. You can drink one potion with your bonus action. You can't move 100 feet because your movement rate to start with is 30, right?
And therefore once you've moved 30 feet, you are done moving. Like there are certain things and especially in a video game,
you have to con very specifically design them in because there isn't a human arbiter like a dungeon master sitting on the other end going ahead. I'll allow

that. Go ahead and take that extra so and so. You made a convincing, you know, argument on your swashbuckler is swinging from the chandelier and doing that, you know, pick up extra 10 ft of movement from your jump. Like
it has to be defined because it's a computer game,
right?
And so one of the base things is the action economy. How many actions does your character get to take
or how many does your party get to take,
right? D and D fifth edition is theoretically set up with action economy of four players or four characters in every encounter and they're theoretically balanced against that. So one way to break things is to figure out how to get more actions than you normally would because if your people are if your characters are doing more things than they should be, your damage output will therefore be significantly higher.
As a question,
yes. So, one of them is to give your side more actions.
Yep.
Is another way to reduce the number of

actions that the enemy side gets. So, like slow as a spell.
Yeah. Crowd control basically. And actually, one of the things that was nerfed the most heavily in Boulders's Gate from tabletop D and D is the potency of crowd control spells. And so, for example, in regular in fifth edition D and D, if you cast hypnotic pattern and somebody fails their saving throw, it lasts until they're damaged, somebody pokes them, friend or foe, or 10 rounds have passed. So, everybody gets an action 10 times, right?
In Boulders's Gate, it's two rounds,
right? Because I don't I I have not played a ton of Balders's Gate, but I've never seen a fight in Balders's Gate go 10 rounds.
Yeah. And the same with a whole bunch of their spells. They've had their durations drastically reduced. And part of that, I think, is just because of the potency of combat. And also because again, being a computer, they have to program in reactions for things where a DM might be, oh, the cobalt actually

realizes it should go poke its friend,
right?
Kind of thing.
Yeah.
And so the action economy is one way that you can break D&D games. Mhm.
And again, this is kind of going back to how the game is balanced,
and we freely admit like it's well balanced, but it's never perfect and it shouldn't be.
Um, the second way it's balanced is expenditure of resources. So, there are certain abilities that class characters get from their classes that are limited use and certain ones that aren't. But like a monk has something called key points that let them do extra stuff. They have limited key points. The berserker, we talked about your berserker has a limited number of times they can go berserk before they have to rest, right?
Battlem fighters have superiority dice. Bards have bic inspiration. Clerics and paladins have channelled divinity. These are all things that are limited number of uses up until something called arrest. And we'll get to rest later. Um,

you also have expendable resources like spells. you know, how many times can I cast fireball or cure wounds or other things
which is similar but I think important for our purposes to note that that's different than the abilities that we're talking about because those are two
right
adjacent a monk can only use their key points to do a couple of things where a wizard who has 15 spells memorized and eight different castings between them at different levels has a wider variety of choices and usually spells come back at a much long over a longer duration than some things like key points or BIC inspiration or others that might come back more quickly. Um, you also have things in Bouldersgate especially like items. Um, they throw in a lot of abilities on items that can be used once per short rest. And so, you know, once you pommel strike somebody as a bonus action, you can't do that again until you've taken a short rest. Um, one of the other final

expendable resources that most people don't think about is actually hit points, which is how much damage can you take before you fall unconscious. And hit points are absolutely also an expendable resource. You know, looking at a fight and saying, is it worth taking the damage and some of the other things we think based on the gain we will get for that or grinding your way through a dungeon? like the amount of hit points you spend on one fight dictates can you go for another couple ones before you have to pull back or rest or get to the actual instead of expended resources expendable resources things like potions and scrolls things like you use them once and they're gone
right
and these are also kind of power like your potion of healing it's always that thing h am I low enough now it's useful to use a thing that will be gone forever because I needed short-term benefit.
And this is one of the places where uh fifth ed balance hits a bit of a I would call it a snag, right?

Um which is at the bottom end of your HP value when you go to zero and you can get healing worded back up.
Mhm.
That sort of um the way that you play with your HP very close to zero as opposed to at the top of your pool where you're just like ah it's it's fine. I take like 20 damage. I got like 100 hit points. Who cares, right? Is very different.
Balders's Gate actually will, I don't know if you know, does a really interesting thing where one of their major deviations
is on the falling unconscious and getting back up.
If you drop to zero hit points in Balders's Gate and then get woken back up with a healing word or a help action or something, you're the next time it comes to your turn, you only get a bonus action.
Mhm.
You do not get a regular action.
Yeah, that fixes a lot. Yeah, that it um and for what that means for if you're unfamiliar is it means you can't do your big thing. You can't do your big attack, your big spell, etc. Um and so unlike Dn D where as long as you are conscious on

your turn, you can do everything. Meaning, you could get knocked unconscious, have somebody throw a healing potion at you, get knocked unconscious again, get healing worded, oh, now it's my turn. Okay, I'm fine.
Right. Um, there are higher stakes in Balders's Gate for that. And that was actually, I think, a really nice
I agree.
Balance change for the game,
especially because they did something really cool that you don't see in D and D, which is um you can throw potions at people,
which I think is kind of hilarious. Potions have a small splash radius. Anybody that gets hit is affected by the potion. So, if you have like two buddies standing next to each other, you can just throw a healing potion and they will both get hit on the splash and healed for it. Or if you have a buddy laying down next to an unconscious somebody else, you throw a healing potion at them, you might wake them both up. Like, it's playful and fun.
Okay, I've never wanted to play Balders's Gate as badly as I do in this moment to make a build focused entirely on gaining proficiency, accuracy, and

the ability to throw potions at people as every form of offense, support, defense, all of that. No weapons, just Hucks potions. Uh, and this has nothing to do with the fact that Final Fantasy Tactics came out yesterday and everybody's talking about chemists. It's fine.
Actually, one of the builds I'm playing is a throwing build will, which is primarily barbarian. One of the barbarian um, lines in there basically gets a bonus to throwing damage and accuracy. And the tavern brawler feed I mentioned, in addition to up, what it basically does is it doubles your strength bonus.
Mhm. for unarmed attacks, improvised weapons, and throne weapons.
Okay,
so I have a pike that returned. It's a returning pike. My Carlac currently is a raging barbarian with a 22 strength getting to throw a returning pike that gets instead of plus six to hit for that, plus 12 cuz we've doubled our

strength bonus. plus 12 to hit and damage along with all sorts of other throwing bonuses and can pick people up and huck them for that as well as throw potions andor exploding barrels or other things. I find it's glorious.
Excellent.
But anyway, like that deviating slightly, but like
there are fun things that they've done that because it's also on a tabletop and plotted out or it is always represented is easier than doing this with miniatures.
Yes. just straight up like throwing potions in tabletop D and D even in a in a theater of the mind game would be really hardc where here you can see exactly and position your person exactly
to like
you've parted out right all of the bookkeeping has been removed as a thing as a chore that a player because in this case we're going to call the GM a player
would need to do and that's all been put on the computer.
Yeah. But um so anyway, so for balancing

D&D combat, you have action economy. How many actions do people get for your party? All of the resources that get expended during a fight. Um all of your expendable resources, in other words, the pull pull rip cord because I'm actually going to read my scroll of fireball or take my potion of healing,
right?
Or put on my oil of sharpness for this fight or whatever it is. Um, and then, um, this kind of gets you to the resting part of the game. And in other words, how often can I get all of those things I expended back,
right?
You know, for your action economy, you get your actions back every round, but for some of the abilities and spells, they might come back longer. And D&D is balanced kind of around the concept. Initially, the DMG, the Dungeon Master's Guide, fifth edition said, "We expect players to do between 6 to eight medium difficulty encounters

during an adventuring day." In other words, before you do a long rest and reset everything and basically get everything back. Um, very few places I have ever ever played do that. Like that's a real dungeon crawl. like most groups. I was actually I did a Google search on the internet it and it says that the practical assumption is around three to four resource consuming encounters and they say resource consuming because you may get an encounter that is a social encounter or something else that you're not expending your resources
right
and most players tend to play more towards that where even three to four may seem a lot for some groups.
Yeah. the the definition of a medium encounter in the DM uh G is also a little precise, right? Like what exactly is a I don't think I've ever seen a good precisely balanced medium encounter because balancing encounters in D and D

is hard.
Yep.
It is very difficult because of all of those things that Jeff just mentioned, you have to take all of them into account on both sides to create a balanced encount like Nope. very hard, very difficult. And then you add dice to it, right? It would be difficult if you if everything like rolled average every time and it's borderline impossible when the dice are just like a but do whatever that cobalt crit twice. Jeff's character is dead. Counter unbalanced.
It's actually easier to bal balance will like a six or eight person fight than like a two to three person fight.
Yes. Because there's more slot.
Yeah. Because like if you have a threeperson fight, one or two bad roles on the party side could be really bad. Where with six to eight people, even if somebody like had a series of bad roles and got knocked out, there's enough other people to compensate or cover like things average out more statistically with the large set.
Yes.
But anyway, so D and D is balanced against the board. So for D and D, they

have a concept of resting called short and long rests. Some abilities and hit points can come back on a short rest. Those basically are the party taking an hour. It's like, "Hey, we're going to go rest for an hour." So, this isn't like, "Hey, there's the boss room. Let's take a short rest." Um, it's you go rest for an hour and there's decent amounts of abilities that come back for that. And then something called a long rest, which is basically 8 hours kind of you sleep or and usually involves sleeping and other things. And in fifth edition, basically, unless there's something weird, everything comes back at the end of a long rest. You are fully healed. All of your spells are back. All of your abilities, all of just anything that is expended short of being expendable like a scroll or potion, all of those come back on a long rest. And that very much simpl that's part of the fun of fifth edition is it simplified a lot of things. It's like you're not having to spend three days of downtime like in third edition with your cleric sitting there doing rounds of cure wound spells until you're

ready to go again, right?
Like ah, skip that. You guys got an overnight sleep, you're good. or burning wheel where your downtime is measured in months or is it measured in weeks, months, and years. Burning wheel's weird though. Don't don't Yeah.
Yeah. But um and different classes have different things that come back on short and long rests. I think the base rogue is the only one in D and D who never who doesn't expend anything. They can as long as they don't run out of hit points, none of their abilities like they don't get spells. none of their abilities kind of use charges or have do this two times, you know, before your next short rest kind of stuff, but that's
yeah,
neither here nor there. So, again, it's kind of balanced against the short and the long rests as well as kind of the difficulty levels and the number of encounters. Um, because hold on, I'm going to write that down. number of because one of the things about D and D if you're playing it and

you're like our party is traveling four days to get to the dungeon and on day two you get the random encounter almost everybody knows it doesn't matter how many resources you expend because you're probably not going to get another fight that day and so people can be like yeah fireball fireball fireball oh yeah wall of fire you know they they can just kind of
dump through it where if you're dungeon crawling you might be I think I could probably afford to spend two spells this combat because I know there's probably going to be another four or five things before we rest and I get them back. Yep.
So, there's more resource management in some aspects of play than in other aspects of play,
right?
And certain classes do better and worse with that. Certain classes being able to use everything they have are actually part of what makes balancing hard because those classes be like, "Yeah, all of it." where and then I get it all you know where other classes are like I can do more metered out approach over

time
right yes absolutely
so throwing this in right here Balders's Gate has a thing that they don't talk about explicitly but which is already broken based on everything I've just said which is how resting works. So, in Balders's Gate, from a story perspective, there's time scarcity. You have actually, spoiler, for the first 10 minutes of the game, everybody in your party basically starts off the game having been implanted with mind flare um tadpoles that are going to basically that are burdened your head and are going to turn you into something you don't want to turn into. Right.
You're going to turn into an olithid, a mind flare.
Too many tentacles, right? Got it.
Yeah. And that pretty that kills you. And so you start with a ticking clock.
This kills the player, right? Okay, cool.
You start with a ticking clock story-wise, which is you need to figure

this out and solve this before you get killed. And we know this checkpically takes a couple of days. Like this is the story you're presented. There isn't actually time pressure. Like there is a thing actively blocking it. You could theoretically rest for 90 days in a row and you will not turn into a mind flare. So they have a story-wise scarcity thing. You only have a limited amount of time. So most players when they're resting don't do it egregiously because there's this mental clock in your head which is I have a you know I don't want to die. There is a ticking time bong attached to my head. But um you can take and they actually did a thing where in D and D a short rest takes an hour and you could do any number of them during the adventuring day. But the fact that they each take an hour mean you're not doing them in the middle of a dungeon or something else. In Balders's Gate, you get two short

rests before you is also an expendable resource. And then you do you do not get them back until you take a long rest, but they're a button click. You can be 5 seconds from entering combat outside the boss room and hit the short rest button and everybody gets healed up and all of their short resty abilities back and other things. There are ways to extend that. You can award your party adds an extra short rest based on their interpretation of a rule which was great. Like there's ways to fiddle with this, but usually two short rests and you have to do a long rest,
right?
But again, you can also do a long rest right before the boss's room. You can camp anywhere. It takes you to a different camping screen. And because there isn't actually that ticking time bomb and because you can do these almost anywhere in the game, you can actually play the game if you want to going through and just being like, "All of my spells, all of my abilities. Boom. Okay, cool. We fought those three goblins. Long rest. Okay, let's go." You know,

you can do this even on minor things if you want to. There's a minor mechanic in there that you eat food during a long rest and that costs a little bit of money, but you find so much food along the way.
Yeah.
That this isn't really a gating mechanism.
Yeah.
In the game. So, Balders's Gate had that and that's in there very specifically, I think, because they wanted people at different skill levels to be able to play. If your tactical acumen isn't as good, um you they don't want you to feel punished for having to expend a lot of resources. your spells, your hit points, your abilities, solving each fight versus somebody who's really particularly good at it or has played through the game a couple of times and knows how to do it. So,
and and part of that, right, is the other end of it is they have made it possible for players to make the game artificially difficult by not engaging those buttons. Yes. Right. You can choose to not click the short rest button ever. You can say, "I'm never

going to short rest. I'm only going to long rest. and I'm only going to long rest after X happens and that's how I'm gonna make I get five long rests per act and there's three act like there there's all sorts of ways that people have
added to that and there are difficulty levels in Boulders's Gate where you the normal one you start at you can go into one that they
don't remember what they call it's almost like story mode or something where the fights are easier I'm playing on tactician mode which is oh well you need more of a challenge sure there is also a I think they call it honor mode or something where
what they really do mean for that is that the fights are harder but also there are no revert to save
right
like there is one save file
yep
if you make a bad roll or series of roles like
yeah it it's what it's what many players would refer to as a hardcore playthrough um uh just like your Minecraft world if you play hardcore in Minecraft and you die your world gets deleted.
Yep. And the only reason I don't like

Honor Mold and Boulder's Gate 3 is the interface in their kind of 3D isometric view with rotating camera is still wonky enough that every once in a while you click on something you don't mean to. you're you send your character like down a hill instead of right next to you because it kind of clipped through some of the like there's enough little fiddly interface bits. Like I have definitely done rever quick save reversions because I'm like, "Oh, I accidentally clicked on a red item and picked up something that makes people think I stole it,
right?
Because it was sitting right next to the other thing I was trying to pick up, right?
And I don't want the entire shop in Balders's Gate attacking me and then the guards coming,
right? It's it's uh the same reason that I won't play modded Minecraft in hardcore or without the ability to console command fix things. Give
me 20 seconds. Well, keep going.
The the the fundamentally one of the problems uh that ends up arising from games is that games are fundamentally incapable of

accounting for all possible circumstances, right? And they're still fiddly computer programs that still have problems. It is very fascinating to hear Jeff talk about this because I bounced pretty hard on Boulders's Gate. Um there's nothing wrong with it. It's a great game. It's just D and D and I don't want to play D and D right now. It's not it's not what I'm looking for in a game. Uh and so hearing hearing Jeff talk about this and the break which I think he's about to explain to all of you is quite interesting. Um, how many of you have actually played Balders's Gate 3 all all of the way through till completion? I'm genuinely interested. Right. If you're here watching this us talk about like the balance of D and D in Balders's Gate, have you actually beaten the game?
Right.
All right.
We're we're talking real quick. Uh, Jeeoff, I was asking chat how many people have like actually beaten the game and gotten an ending versus just like done the thing that I think a lot of people do, which is sort of splash

around in act one and two forever. Um, and then restart the game with a different character because they had an idea.
It's it is a fun thing to do. It is a well-built game that encourages exploration and environmental interaction in a way that actually Len Studio is pretty famous for both with that and with Divinity. um as well.
Okay, cool.
Um so, short, long rest, number of encounters. So, all of these things and you know, difficulty levels. Um and we'll get to builds in a moment because I want to talk about those, but I noticed a thing doing a playthrough, Will. And so, we've talked about all these different ways the game is balanced. you know, your action economy, your abilities, your spells, your hit points, how often you rest. And we're kind of taking resting a little bit off the table because you can actually if you know that there isn't actually time, actually, occasionally there is time pressure. There will be an event, but

these are few and far between. And the same occasionally you will be in an area that's like you can't camp here, but those are very few and far between. Almost to the point where it's a surprise. You're like, "Oh, I can't camp here. That's unusual,
right?"
Um, so in Balders's Gate, you assemble a party. Um, you have more characters in your, excuse me, you assemble a group, but you lead a party. Your party can have up to four characters in it. Your main character and three other companions that you bring with them. So, for example, my party right now at the moment has Aarian, Carlac, and Shadow Heart, right?
All in it. Back at camp, the rest of the members are hanging out, waiting for me to come back and tag them in at any point. Um, so we have Lzelle there. We have Hlin, we have um what's the female druid's name? I always forget. Um,

Jiara, thank you. Minsk is about to be recruited, so Minsk will be waiting back at camp. The most important character, Buu, will also be there.
Yes.
Right. Okay. Great.
Go for the eyes, Boo.
Buu remains the best D&D character ever. Convince me otherwise.
And actually, Grass is beating me to it. It also camp is also where all of your non-combat NPCs hang out.
Um, where any pets you have assembled hang out. Uh, where Boulders Gate best doggy Scratch hangs out unless you're bringing him out with you. And
Scratch an owl bear?
No. Uh, there is also an owl bear cub that you can recruit if you do the right thing. But
okay.
Um, Scratch is a doggy.
Okay.
Who will sniff out treasure for you, similar to the Fallout doggy.
I've been playing a lot of Silk Song. Our definition of dog has expanded greatly recently because there are definitely bugs that are bigger than the

main character that are puppy, right? So,
yeah.
Yeah. Tara is also in camp, especially more often if you have Gail around. Tara is a owl cat. Um, she's a cat with wings who is uh intelligent enough to talk to even without your speak with animal spell.
Okay, that's cool.
Um, and okay, all of these characters in camp, you also have Okay, minor spoiler again for something that happens in act one.
Sure. You could end up and you should end up recruiting um Withers. Wthers is basically a skeleton, a lich, um something something powerful and undead.
He is a contrivance I believe is the official name of Wither's uh species is contrivance.
Yes.
Right.
And Withers does a couple of important things for you. Number one, if you have

a character that gets kill killed, um he can resurrect them. So if a star gets killed and you don't have a cleric with reify or a spell, withers can bring a star back to life.
Mhm.
Um that is a reason he's there. Withers also let you for a 100 gold, which in this game once you're
rolling
halfway through act one is a pittance will let you will reset you to level one and let you reset back your character and then you get all your XP back and you can level up again. So if you were level if you were a level seven wizard is Gail, you could wander up say, "Excuse me, I would like to respect." And he's like, "Sure." Boom. You're back to level one. You can reassign your stats and your skills, everything except your race and your background. So you can be like, Gail is now a paladin, not that he should be. Redo his stats,
right?
And level up four levels of paladin and three levels of warlock because you're

deciding he's going to be, you know, a hexblade paladin.
Sure. Right. Right.
Whatever it is. And you can do this indefinitely.
Right. As long as you have money.
Yes. And actually, if you're running short of money, you can sneak behind others and pickpocket them and take all your money back and do it again because Okay, great.
Yes.
But um so resp-specking your character also is a big difference from fifth edition in that fifth edition doesn't let you respect,
right?
Normally, I mean, your DM could say, "Sure, go ahead and rebuild your character,
but this is like built into the game. It's explore, make as many fun things as you want, be friendly, you know, and it's great. And it minorly breaks the game in different ways because what it means is you can play a stronger character and then respspec him into the build you like if you have a build that comes online at level six, you can play something else, turn level six, and then be like, cool, I am now ready for to

respspec my character into this.
Right? And it removes the I have to grind five levels to get to the part where my build actually comes online,
right? Yeah.
And um that is fairly meaningful.
But that also isn't what breaks it. Withers does one other thing which is if you decide will you want some other characters in your party that aren't named characters, right?
Like if you don't want Carl and Shadow Hart and Viscary, you know, all of those.
I want Steve.
Yeah. If you want Steve Withers will let you hire or hire higher leans.
Okay.
And higher leans are I believe I don't think it ever refreshes and I don't know if it's random or if there's just 14 that get offered up, but um and the hierlelings are guess what? People you can hire. They come with a race, a class, a background. But just like every other member of your party, once you hire a hierling Oh,

there we go. Um
Ramy says it's one for each class.
For each class.
Yeah.
Um once you hire them, you can of course go respspec them. So you can't change you can change their appearance upon hiring them. The only thing you can't change is their race and their background. So if they're a half- elf entertainer, you can't change those two things. But you can hire, you know, the half elf entertainer bard and be like, "Actually, no. I would instead like to respspec you as a cleric or, you know, whatever it is." And then those join your camp. They are recruitable. You can take them um put them in your party and go out with them. And withers will let you hire up to three of them. And this is getting towards the game-breaking part of it. Um, and three means that since your party size is four, you could have your character and three other basically non origin characters or non-story characters and you could run around and do all of Balders's Gate with

basically none of the story characters involved,
right,
in it, which is also a nice choice,
right?
But one of the things that's interesting about all of this is, okay, so you got your party will,
which is you and three other
characters. You're going out, you're doing stuff. You can come back to camp and be like, "Hey, Hasslin druid buddy, I know you're not in my party right now, but we're going to kick a moment, bring you in, and all those spells you weren't using because you weren't out adventuring with me. Could you cast a couple of cures and maybe a long strider and a dark vision spell, you know, for the person who can't see, heal us all up because you can again pop into camp anytime you want,
right? And so you can be right outside a boss fight, pop into camp, go take another party member who's not adventuring with you that has spells, have them do some healing or buffs on you or other things, kick them back out of your party, put a star in back in, and then pop back out like, cool, we just got healed up for this. You know,

we just
And that doesn't use
one of those buttons. the the all of the expended resources
that would have gone for that the spells or the abilities or you know some of the resting
all don't get expended because I just had Hlin and Jahira cast a whole bunch of things right
on me
which is a partial break. So, I was looking at that and I was like, wait a second.
Okay, Withers lets me pick another three hierlings. And so, I looked at some of the spells that last a while.
And there's two type um Baldersgate did an interesting thing. So, there's concentration spells just like in fifth edition D and D. This basically a concentration spell means you are concentrating on a spell. While you are concentrating on that spell, if you cast another spell that requires concentration, the spell you are concentrating on stops and you start concentrating on the new one. Right?
So you can be like, "Hey, haste spell

over there." Then you're like, "Um, oh wait, no, I actually need to cast a wall of fire." When you cast that, since both take concentration, your haste spell stops when your wall of fire goes up,
right?
There's other elements around this, but that's all we really need for now is you're only allowed one concentration spell at a time. I checked. If you have somebody in your party cast a concentration and leave, the concentration does get broken.
Okay.
So, you can't have um Hlin back in camp concentrating on a really powerful haste spell or something on your party member and then leave him behind and just head off,
right?
But there the other there are spells that last basically until a long rest. There's a lot of spells in fifth edition D and D that last an hour. Um, so if you cast um cat's grace, which lets you get uh um
advantage on all dexterity checks, that normally requires concentration and lasts an hour.
In Balders's Gate, they got rid of the hour part because time is a little

fiddly there. Like sometimes you're running through a city and you know they want to do cutscenes or there's all sorts of other things or they know somebody might want to just like leave and come back 45 minutes later or tab out. So they basically got rid of the time pressure on those spells. They just said, "Oh, if you cast a spell that lasts an hour, screw it. It lasts up until your next long rest."
Oh man. Hold on. Chad Chad is currently having an idea to cast haste on an enemy and then end it, giving them the debuff for having haste ended, which is
right
fairly significant and there would be no saving throw.
That's kind of devious. I like it. Good job, chat. Keep being evil. Anyway,
you could have a sorcerer actually twin spell it.
Yeah. So, you could do two and then you just have two people puke their guts up from losing haste. All right. Anyway.
Yeah. Um, so you can't do those, but there are a certain number of spells.

Um, protection from poison, dark vision, freedom of movement, which keeps you from getting paralyzed, impeded by difficult terrain, all sorts of things. Um, aid, and a couple of others that last until a long rest. And so, Will, I hired three hierlings. My party's now level 11.
So are these hierlings. Okay,
I have two clerics and a druid.
Okay,
what this means is before my party leaves camp, everybody who can't see in the dark gets dark vision. Everybody gets heroes feast cast on them, which gives them some buffs and makes them immune to poison and gives them extra hit points. Everybody has an upcast aid on them.
Aid gives you five hit points per level if you upcast it. So at fifth level, that gives every party member plus 25 hit points.
Sure. On top of the hero's feast and the immunity to poison, the I can't be held or paralyzed or anything else from

freedom of movement, I can see in the dark. Um, I have long strider on me, which makes it so I have basically 33% more movement than I otherwise would have had. A death ward, which means that the first time I get knocked to zero hit points, I instead get knocked to one hit point. And one more spell. Um, crap, what's the name of it? There's a really weird one which is an awful spell normally which um is cast by a cleric. The target gets plus one AC and saving throw and half of the damage they take is also then taken by the cleric. So the damage gets half. So if you would have taken 20 points, you take 10 and your cleric takes 10. So, normally like you cast this on somebody and your cleric's going to get hit a lot and maybe if they're a healing cleric, that's okay. You can do this on the people you leave in camp because it's not a concentration spell. And so, I have two clerics back

there, each of whom have cast this twice on two of my party members and two of my party members. So, my party members have plus 25 hit points, take half damage in addition to all of the other stuff. Warding bond. Thank you,
Dark Steel Spark. Thank you.
Yep. And they've also cast aid on themselves back at camp and maximized their constitution because um
because they don't ever actually have to be in combat,
right? They're left back at camp. They can't be. It's funny. I come back into camp and there's these big blood pools around the cleric because you we when somebody gets hit, there's a blood splatter. So, I come back and I see blood splatters around my two clerics in camp.
Uhhuh.
But the game is absolutely not balanced. We're basically doubling the hit points or adding 25 hit points and then doubling every single party member with getting knocked to zero hit points actually puts you to one. and all of

those communities and other things. And this is an edge case, but I'm I'm just I'm using this as an example of when you make a game that's this complex with this many cool things that you can do and you're having to make choices around it. Like I'm pretty sure nobody on the dev team ever sat and thought what would happen if you know somebody from lowlevel on got three hierlings, two of whom were clerics to cast all of these warding spells and a druid to cast the rest of them and just like you can't balance a combat encounter to take that into account in addition to normal play. Well, so and I think uh I think Demon Works here has
a an absolutely fascinating and quite correct take, which is as with all other D and D games, the real cost is measured in how much time and energy the player spends setting the thing up.
And I 100% agree. The problem with this one is it takes about two or three

minutes.
Yeah.
Like you have them join your party, they cast a couple of spells, you kick them out, do the same, do the same. And because this lasts until a long rest, that probably means you're getting in most cases a couple hours then of game actual gameplay
with all of these in effect. Oh, and I forgot to mention, will huge amounts of good berries for healing and anytime I'm low on hit points, I can just pop back into camp and one of my clerics can cast an area of effect healing spell that also heals them up,
right,
who are taking the damage and the party. So like I am not going to play this the rest of the game, but like running through a couple of fights with this is just it is literally like you cannot balance a game for that extreme along with normal styles of play. And I'm going to caveat normal styles because I want to get to that
right
in a second. But
because and it it's just it's very funny to me because a reminder that we started this by talking about the barbarian flowchart.

Mhm. Right. There are people who play the same game, the same game, and could be doing all of this buff stacking and and um and setups and and all of that against am I raging? Yes. No. If yes, hit the biggest thing on the field. If no, rage, then hit the biggest thing on the field.
End flowchart, right? like th those both coexist in the same space and it's very interesting.
And one of the most interesting things to me is I've watched a good amount of Balders's Gate content. I've actually never seen this particular I'll just call it an exploit.
Yeah. use like I've absolutely seen people talking about oh you know have your druid in camp cast longstrider you know if you don't have anybody in your active party who can do it because that bonus 10 ft of movement
especially for melee characters is really nice in a game where there's a lot of terrain and verticality

right
like that's an interesting thing
but part of this to me just shows how hard it is to balance games if you want to give players the freedom that you have for a lot of these for this kind of game.
Yeah.
Like this isn't Slay the Spire, which or Monster Train or any number of games where there are only a certain number of things you can do like your your combinator your possibility space is a lot narrower,
right? The same honestly if you're playing Call of Duty or Halo or other things like there are guns you can pick up that you might be better with or guns that might be better or gear that might be better but none of them are let's double plus this over here by using weird setup kind of thing
and all of these kinds of spells.
But let's get
Yeah,

I want to I want to talk a little bit about that. um the the complexity, right? Like
because yeah, that is the other area around balance,
right? Like because there there's sort of a you have to decide whether the balanced team cares enough to balance that out for the small number of players who care,
right? Because a lot of players simply won't, right? A lot of players don't care about like absolutely minmaxing combat or won't even think about minmaxing combat because they're trying to smooch Carlac because
they're going to optimize towards what they see.
Correct. Right. Which
they're going to find the sword and be like, "Oh, this sword looks better. Cool. I'm going to
take this one."
And um Balders's Gate in particular, because it's so story driven, a lot of players, like we had someone in chat who came in right at the beginning was like, "Oh, you broke Balders's Gate 3. I bet it's a charisma character thing because

that is a common a more common a more well-known way to do it because that's the focus of the game, right?
Oh, 100. And like I am playing through the game to see it. I'm also just doing the game designer thing and poking at all the different parts.
Break all the far it goes.
Yeah. Right. Exactly. 100%. Um
because there is another world where a character leaving your party would have their spells on a party member canceled.
Yeah. In fact, I would expect that to be the case almost.
I kind of did as well.
Yeah.
But I think part of the reason they didn't is there are because you can go to camp so easily. Like in act three, I was visiting the thieves guild talking to this this isn't a spoiler.
Yeah.
I was talking to the guild master in the thieves guild.
Thieves guild master wants to talk to Jihara the druid who's in my party. Like come back. I'll talk to you then. So literally from her office, I went to camp because camp is its own special thing, kicked out Aarian, put Jihira in

the party, exited camp, still in the guild now again in the guild master's office. They had that conversation, but I'm my playthrough is with Aarian, not with Jihira. After the conversation was done, I went back to camp, kicked her out, brought Aarion back. Like I could see it being very discouraging based on how people want to play for subbing characters in and out for story events and other things.
Yeah.
That if all of Jihara's spells suddenly disappeared when I left brought her out of the party and then brought her back in all the stuff she'd cast, that would also be I think they erred on the side of let's be friendly.
Yeah. And I think that the um it also boils down to like what what the the stakes are, right? So, like the stakes of balancing League of Legends, right, or Dota or Call of Duty any head-to-head multiplayer game, competitive PVP multiplayer
much higher than,
oh, hey, single player,
you got to have the experience that you wanted to have and see the ending you wanted to see in our single player game.

There's no downside to that, right? There's no like and if if
actually explicitly because like recently well recently being half a year ago or whatever they actually built their mod loader
into the game itself. It's no longer an external thing. And so if you're like I don't want ugly tadpole skin, there's a mod for that. If you're like me and you're like, you know, my part of the game isn't lugging loot to the shopkeep emperor back and forth six times cuz I found more than I can carry. I have something that I think quadruples the weight I can carry per character.
Sure.
Because I'm just not interested in
optimizing my inventory even more and making multiple shop runs,
right?
Like that's just that's not part of my fun, right?
Like there's a mod for that. I like dying the clothes. There's a mod that makes the dyes not wear out so you don't have to keep hunting for that one black and blue dye you want your party to look like. like they have a whole bunch of quality of life mods that have just been

built in to let you play more the way that you want to already. And that's continuation of their let's let people play in a friendly way. Like it's philosophically what their game is about.
Yeah. And so, but the interesting thing is I think when most people think broken, the other really interesting thing that makes these games hard to balance is how you build your party um is a power level thing.
Yes.
Like it is very easy to build a regularly balanced D&D party. It is also very easy, especially with Withers letting you respec anytime you want to even if you're unfamiliar with any of this, go online and look up a couple of builds for like powerful builds for Boulders's Gate or go watch some McC's videos on optimizing. Usually he does D and D character builds. He's

done a whole bunch for Balders's Gate. He's like, "Oh, I do want that throwing barbarian you were talking about, Will. He's done a video on that. You can go watch through and be like, cool. I have my 1 to2 build laid out for me so I know how to build it on a whole bunch of things I never would have thought of otherwise that somebody did for me or the double hand crossbow bard of doom build which is brutal or you know one of many other builds that find interesting combinations of things because that also sets your difficulty level if you have somebody doing two or three times more damage on average than the typical right?
You know, Dn D character that's also hard to balance against
because the all fighter party is in some ways the floor, right? Like the all fighter, no magic.
I don't know,
right? Like people underrate fighters.
Sure. Like I'm not I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that without any magic support there is a cap on how good

those fighters can be, right? Not that it's right because they are some of the only um like assuming none of them take the mage knight uh path class option third level thing whatever it is. Um
wait spell or
yeah subass the spellb blade subass. I couldn't remember the name of the thing again.
Oh hexlade. Yeah hexlade comes in at level one which is
yeah D and D not my thing right now. Um so I can't nouns with it. Um,
but but like that feels like the base versus like
we're going to take the all wizard party of you don't get a turn, which is definitely a party build, right? Those are those exist in the same game
and ha not maybe not have to both work but probably should both work unless you're going to lay out explicit requirements for the player to play around or to have a certain level of complexity that they must adopt in order

to play like we're playing Pokemon right so far we have not had to mess with stat moves at all right so far we have clicked the move that is I do the most damage to that Pokemon of that type die,
right? Um, and so there's this balancing act to be had between in what the game is asking of the player between,
all right, so here's Jeff's 47step plan to get all of these buffs and to trivialize some combats and to like do all of these things and like it's all of this stuff and here's Will's I throw things at people, right? Character, right? Like
the funny thing is I I I optimize build towards lazy. Like there are times where I am not bothered to open my inventory and switch gloves to the gloves that give me advantage on
picking locks, right?
Because it's one move too many picking.
It's a lock. Just smash it. It's fine.
Yeah.
Barbarian. But

yeah, but like it there are some hideously complex builds that I've seen people build for fun,
but you know, my one is I build towards lethal damage.
This? Yeah,
it's this. What do you mean fireball is not the correct choice in every situation? No.
Boulders Gate makes that really funny in that because there are explosive things in the environment. Every once in a while you fireball and you end up with a whole bunch more going on than you thought was going to be going on.
And um one of the doesn't Balders's Gate also do volutric fireball, not point radius fireball. Uh a small clarification, the difference between those two things is one of them is everything within x feet of this of this point takes fireball damage. The other one is the fireball will occupy x cubic meters of space and will attempt to spread from its origin point until x cubic meters of space have been

occupied.
I do not believe it uses that one.
Okay. Cuz the second one is way more powerful than the first
because when you're actually the reason they chose not to is when you're bouncing around to show where you put your area of effect down
that would be able to show that part.
That's a ton of computing power. That's like your computer just hiccups.
Well, it would also be unreadable to some people who don't understand why.
That's fair. Yeah.
It's like they're like, "Why is this suddenly changing drastically?"
But there are a lot of areas with barrels of wine or smoke powder or even like oil on the floor.
Yeah.
Like they've done a good job on setting up the environment or like explosions that actually knock somebody off a cliff and they fall like 30 feet to land down somewhere else. So, they're taking the fireball plus the falling damage. Like, there's all sorts of interesting things on that. But yeah, like how you build your party. Like, it's funny. I actually sometimes feel like my wizards and clerics are slightly less powerful than

like my fighters and like hand crossbows because I'm always in the back of my mind saying, is it worth expending one or more spells here? Even though I could have unlimited rests,
right,
just because it's an expenditure of resources,
because fire fireball could always be the right choice, right?
It just means you're going to have to hit that long rest button slightly more often.
Well, and so if we put it in the language of decision trees, right? That means that there's this big sort of override decision tree switch at the very bottom of all the spellcasters, which is do I want to deal with the headache of managing this resource? Am I willing to opt into the complexity of managing a spell slot right now? Or do I just let them chill in the back while the person who is not expending a resource, hand, crossbow, bard, fighter, barbarian, druid with

shapeshift, whatever.
Um, fight the combat without expending that resource,
right? Like that that big switch is I think sort of the same thing as opting between fighter and spellcaster, right? as between spellcaster and
very oddly complex specific spiky build
and one of the interesting things about Balders's Gate is they also took concentration away from summon spells and so you know if you're say a highle druid
or a high level warlock like if I bring will in my party I believe I can have a two undead of two different spell levels and one or 200 conjured elementals because the spells come back on a short rest. Like conjure, conjure, short rest, conjure, conjure, short rest. Okay, I have four things that now journey with me, all of whom have spells and actions on their own.

Right.
Druids are particularly egregious about basically running around with two to four to five active pets
at a time. Some of whom are beefy. Like you be, I'm too lazy to consider Fireball. I'm just going to send in my elemental army or do that with the fire block. Like it's fun. You get there's lots of stuff. And again, that's part of what makes a game like this tricky to balance. But again, all of those I feel like like actually
that goes back to remember the action economy will if it's balanced towards four characters each taking an action, etc. Bringing in a character who has like three pets each of whom like here's a minor elemental and a major elemental. Oh, and a dryad that you summoned with your like conjure nature spirit,
right?
Like each of those doing extra things starts breaking the action economy part of the game. And those are fairly well-known um ways to make your party more powerful,
right,

in g in Boulders's Gate that are just balanced in different ways in tabletop.
Yeah. Um one of the ways, by the way,
you can absolutely turn it into Pokemon.
Yeah. One of the one of the things that you one of the places it's easiest to see the action economy balance is actually in legendary creatures. Legendary creatures get a certain number of legendary actions, right? If you're still acting more than the legendary creature with the legendary actions and their lair action,
you've probably done something outside the scope of the intended balance of the encounter. Uh because those things are designed to make it so they don't drown in action economy.
Yeah. And that is one of those ones that like if you wanted your all wizard party or your all druid party to break things like you could come in with four druids you know everybody could be specked into a druid each of which has their own menagerie of elementals and nature spirits and other things and just be like ah
you can't do the pixie polymorph thing in BG3 right?
Uh no.
Okay cool. There's a

pixies in BG3.
Yeah I think it's pixies. some small flying fay. Uh you can summon them according to the according to one of the spells in the player's handbook and then they have the ability to to cast polymorph. So you summon a number of them equal to the number of characters in your party and they polymorph all of your characters into Tyrannosaurus Rexes and then you just go.
It's a silly It's a silly thing.
It It is one that got that got through the loopholes. Correct. It al it also is solved by DM of the pixie doesn't know what a T-Rex is. That also stops it. But
but yeah, there are definitely T-Rex. Actually, for those of you since we were talking about Critical Role right at the beginning who watched Critical Role in season two, at a certain point when the characters are traveling through the jungle, they bump into a T-Rex. Yeah. And you could just see Liam, the player, being like, "Oh, I know what a T-Rex is now, and I

have a transmutation wizard." Right.
And sure enough,
right? Yeah.
Ever after. T-Rex was on the table.
DMs, be careful what you let your people who can shape change see. Um,
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was just one of those ones. You could just see his eyes getting big. They're like, "Ah, right.
This is now on the table." But yeah, so like getting back to that. So that is the other part of the balance is you know how do you do classes? How do you stack up all of the variability and ability to stack builds on and again fifth edition is a lot more balanced than every other edition and significantly more so than Pathfinder. Like Pathfinder is all about finding the weird combination right
or at this point well known and lumping them on top of each other for much bigger power disparities
right
than you see in fifth edition. And that's by choice
right I was going to say and that's not a bad thing. That's the point, right? That is
hearkening back to the days of 35 where you used all of the tables to figure out all of your mathematical break points.

And
I made 3.5 characters.
Yeah. Right. There's nothing wrong with that. And so yeah, the the power of the class levels versus the complexity of play in a long game. Because part of the downside will to the complexity of play is if you're going through a dungeon and you're doing like eight or nine battles before the thing, if you have to do this whole weird setup and dance before each one, it can get a little dull,
right?
And that can make it not part of the fun.
Menuing is in some way the balance, I guess,
maybe. But part of it is also the story nature. Like you could build a an ambush party, a party that's whole job is to sneak up and attack everybody and get huge, you know, burst damage, but what do you you know, that kind of eliminates all of the dialogue. If you're coming in to see story dialogue and how the story plays out and instead of sneaking up to outside of range and just having everybody alpha strike in,
like you can play the game that way, but you're going to miss out on huge parts of the story. So in some cases you see

people doing that on second playthroughs if they don't want to see the story, right? It's like I'm going to be murder hobos. You can go through and there's all sorts of encounters you can start from a distance before the cut scene plays,
right?
Like that's just built into it. But
you kind of lose you lose the aspect of the story of I think what makes Boulders Gate magical, right?
And so most people I bumped into know they could do that, but they just don't want to play that way,
right? or elemental stacking where they're like, I'm going to sneak in and put 40 explosive barrels nearby and back up and throw a molotov and you know the whole half of the castle explodes,
right?
Like that's doable, but most people again that's just too much effort,
right? And so the complexity of the thing becomes its own sort of additional lever I guess in a lot of cases um on whether or not
it needs to be fixed, right? you get to opt in for having the experience that you want to have. And if the experience that you want to have is I want to

crunch all I want to, you know, spend hours painfully collecting every barrel of gunpowder I find
so that I can stack them in a neat pyramid all around the the final boss and then just light a match and play the,
you know, sneak in with a high strength character that's invisible. Place all the explosives and then sneak out and shoot an arrow, fire arrow from a distance,
right? boom, fight over. If that's what you want to do, that's cool. But and I think the
and Balders Gate will reward you with that. It will let you do that,
right? And I think that that's the kind of big important thing is that because players are choosing the path that they take through the game. It feels like it's not a question of
should simple things be as powerful as complicated things. It feels like it's a question of can you play the game in a simpler way and succeed

or not, right? Cuz if you can't do the all fighter party or the all barbarian party or the all barbarian party
or the all druid
barbarian bearbarian party, right? However you want to do it. Um then like
the naked druids who shape change the barbarian.
That's right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Um this will get sillier if we let it. So we're not going to um
but yeah like and that is Balders's Gate is definitely balanced in normal mode towards being able to bring that fourperson party of straight classes of pretty much whatever you pick and as long as you you know there's challenging fights but as long as you're throwing some the decent gear you find on them and you know taking your rests every once in a while so you have your resources it is a very doable thing.
Mhm. They have the higher difficulty mode, tactician for people who want more of a challenge. But even then, like with good builds, it isn't that much of a challenge.

Yeah.
And that's part of what you're saying. Like if you were choosing to optimize in, you're self you're by choice, you were removing some of the challenge that you would otherwise get.
Yeah. Correct. Um that that is why the uh I I think I've seen content creator clips of solo honor mode tactician playthroughs where you are only allowed to play with Tav. You are not allowed to have anyone else in the party with you.
You just play as Tav and you play on solo uh with tactician with honor mode on uh and people beat the game like that. Like the game is
it it's remarkable. I could not for the life of me tell you how it is done, but it has been done. Right. So the
a lot of it's done actually just from ambushing outside of threat radius.
Yeah, that's probably it.
Um
um actually quick question. Do you know what tab actually stands for?
No, I don't.
I don't either. I just
Yeah, it it is it is what the uh maybe

chat knows. Maybe chat can fill this in. That's always nice.
Google it. But that seems like a lot of that's like changing my gloves. Jeff, that's not baiting chat engagement.
Oh,
tadpole avatar. It's short for Gustav. See, I love this. I'm not sure which of these is correct, but I like both of them, right? It's short for Gustav or Tadpul Avatar. Either of these could be correct, and I will enjoy the fact that both of them might be correct.
Um,
yeah,
all fair on that. Um
yeah, and and I think that this is um sort of one of the I think where I'm landing is the real difficulty in balancing this and the real I guess magic of Balders's Gate and the magic of sort of this is that it admits of so many different styles of play without disenfranchising or demanding any of them.

Right. And actually, I think it's something unique to the computer game. Like, will if you or I were DMing a game.
Yeah.
With players almost by like good DMing principle, we would be adjusting our sessions to the party, their strength, the choices they made to basically make it an interesting and challenging game, no matter what their party setup or other things were. Mhm.
And because that's just part of good DMing and keeping things interesting where a computer game can be like, "Oh, you want to f with it?" Or, you know, "Do you want to make, you know, do you want to do your naked run through only a dagger run,
right?
Go for
I would like to play John Dark Souls in Boulders's Gate 3." Obviously,
actually, no. Yeah. I was sorry. Thinking John Wick for a moment. That would definitely be the double hand crossbow.
Yeah. I like uh by the way uh new favorite one
the adventurer. Thank you Sarah. Yep, that's it.
Oh,

it's another good one.
I don't know which if any of you are lying to me or if anyone actually has the real answer and at this point it's fine. I'm just enjoying this.
Yeah, those are all
banger answers. Yeah.
Yeah. Um
um so yeah there is yeah the complicated builds in you know the trade-off between mental load and it's easy to do. Um, but yeah, I was going to hit head towards a summation unless you got a
Yeah, I just think that that's that's like a thing that we often don't
the thing that often goes undisussed when we're talking about balance is why someone is playing the game in the first place. Like what are they trying to accomplish, right? Because that will account for how much mental load they're really willing to give it, right? I play Minecraft very differently when I'm playing it on stream or when I'm playing it, you know, midnight because I can't sleep and I've made poor choices and now I'm going to build a sheep farm because

I need to have something that I've made today, right? Like those are different levels of mental load that I'm willing to dedicate to the game. And Balders Gate 3 is the same and Slay the Spire is the same and Isaac is the same, right? Um at least as far as single player games are concerned. Obviously multiplayer games totally different animal but single player games.
Yeah. And also though like this was part of the promise of Balders's Gate. Part of the promise was play how you want. You know that they were going to give you this huge playground and lots of story characters and you're going to be able to go through with you know play actually the fact that you can play your own madeup character or one of these six origin characters. Six.
Thought it was more than that. I can't count though, so you know.
Yeah. Um, is pretty impressive that you can basically point of view. Let's see. Will Carlacion

Shadowart
Gale
Gail Lazelle. Yeah. Six.
Six.
So, basically, there are six unique story. Excuse me. There are six stories that could that incorporate one of these characters as the main character.
Yeah. and you've made up your own, but you have those people in your party or any combination of them in your party to interact with along the way.
And then there's also the um
dark urge
dark urge
aka dark.
But yeah, it's it's impressive.
Yeah. Like, so yeah, part of the broken is the fact that they're saying play it your way. But it was also just interesting to me to as I said fall into wow this is probably the not buildwise because like build-wise like oh crossbow bard or you know whatever super strong just exploit of oh cast these spells with people who are never going to adventure with you and basically

I won't say trivialize fights but trivialize fights
dramatically reduce the difficulty. Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, okay. I
Yeah.
And and it all comes back actually withers really is
the prime component to all of this because
the oh you died let's get resurrected. Oh, you want a respspec here anytime you want as often as you want. you know, do it for that's for the build optimization and then the hierlings of oh, you just want extra party members to do whatever with like they all revolve around withers. There withers is the common interface that makes all of them happen.
Yeah. And I think that that is that is really uh the the reason that withers uh race is contrivance. Um, I do agree that the most like the the thing that enables brokenness the most in Balders's Gate is players getting to make a new choice and

that's what Withers embodies.
Mhm.
Okay.
So, I stand by my thumbnail.
I I No, I think it's a good thumbnail. I think it's
I broke Boulders's Gate with Withers going, "Yep,
I don't think anyone's surprised by that part." Thank you everybody for coming to our little talk on uh Jeff breaking Balders's Gate. I hope you all were uh as enthralled and amused by this tale as I was. Uh I absolutely love uh hearing about it. Uh let us know what you thought in the comments. Uh or just tell us what your most favorite utterly broken Balders's Gate 3 build is cuz I I kind of want to hear now. We got a bunch from here in chat, but if you're in the YouTube comments, uh let us let us know uh what you think. Uh I think that's going to do it. Until next time, everybody. Uh say bye to the people, Jeff.
Bye to the people, Jeff. Thanks for watching, Alt. [Music]